Stilistiese variasie in die Afrikaanse reklameteks

Abstract

The usage of language is required throughout virtually each and every aspect of human existence. One of these aspects is advertising. Advertising is the most important opinion – and image – creating agent / catalyst regarding a product of service. Because of the heterogeneous nature of the Afrikaans-speaking community, and because language and society are unseparable perse language (Afrikaans) is used in different ways by different social groups. Interaction between people is virtually impossible without language. The differences between groups require that certain adjustments be made to ensure that a specific message is encoded and conveyed in such a way, that the receiver’s comprehension links up with the sender’s meaning thereof. These accommodations, necessitated by social differences and characteristics, evoke variation in the style of encoding messages. The purpose of this study is to explore the style of, and the stylistic variation in Afrikaans advertisements. This entails inter alia and investigation into the stylistics, text linguistics and sociolinguistics as objects of study to determine in what way style, text and variation are related to one another. This theoretical study is followed by an empirical study in two parts; firstly the analysis of advertisement texts, followed by the collection of empirical data by means of questionnaires distributed amongst copywriters. The results confirmed that stylistic variation is imperative for successful encoding of the Afrikaans advertisement text.