Abstract:
Advertising is the engine that allows the rest of the business world to flourish. It has the subtle ability to reach out and touch everyone living and working in the modern world; it does this through television, posters, radio and billboards. However, in an environment where the language of communication poses linguistic problems to the user or speaker of such language, little time has been taken into consideration of the adverse impact of advertising on the second language learners since advertising has become a prominent in the society. This study highlights the language used in pharmaceutical adverts to achieve distinctive effects and also identifies their linguistic errors as well as gives insight into the language used by advertisers of pharmaceutical products. Advert samples were collected from Lagos State, Nigeria. A total of sixty adverts were gathered but forty remained after sorting and finally thirty-seven adverts were analysed. This study established that advertisers design adverts and manipulate the English language to attract the attention of the audience or listener and to suit their intention of persuading people to buy their products. From the result obtained, it was discovered that the language used in adverts is full of vulgar, slang and emotive in nature thereby enticing and changing the readers’ and listeners’ perspective, and sometimes brings about the use of ungrammatical words which lead to the falling standard of the English language in Nigeria.
