“Say hello to this ad”: The persuasive rhetoric of fictive interaction in marketing

This chapter deals with strategically motivated discourse to show the fundamental role of the conversation frame in language for specific purposes. We focus on imagined speech acts in which advertised products and/or the “problems” they tackle are fictively addressed through non-genuine yes-no responses (e.g. “Say no to wrinkles, say yes to this cream”) and non-actual greetings (e.g. “Hello wireless music. Goodbye wires”), as well as marketing slogans and brands involving intra-sentential fictive speech ascribed to a consumer, the advertiser, and/or the advertised product, service, or behavior (e.g. “I-Love-Art-Tour”). This study is based on our own database of printed advertisements, TV commercials, and brands in five different languages.