Journal of Literature, Languages and Linguistics www.iiste.org ISSN 2422-8435 An International Peer-reviewed Journal Vol.37, 2017 45 Visuals as Effective Extralinguistic Feature of Language of Television Advertisement Mahmud, Memunat Olayemi (Ph.D) Department of Languages, Rufus Giwa Polytechnic, Owo, Ondo State-Nigeria Abstract Television is one of the oldest medium of mass communication and one of the media of advertisement through which information is passed to the people with the aim of affecting their decision on the product being advertised. The ability of television advertisement to convey the desired message to the audience effectively and convincingly may, however, be hindered if the limited time permitted on advertisement belt where linguistic feature, which is fleeting in nature, is used with few or no extralinguistics. The implication of this is that the message conveyed is soon lost with the fleeting words and expressions used in the advertisement. The audio- visual advantage of television that permits the combination of visual and linguistic elements in advertisement copy makes television advertisement a more effective medium of influencing consumers’ attitude to products. It is, however, noted that most of the works on advertisements do not pay adequate attention to these visual elements as factors that contribute to the effectiveness of advertisement, especially on television.The objective of this work, therefore, is to identify visuals such as dramatization, pictorials, display, facial expression, etc., as effective visual elements used in television advertisements, determine their frequency of occurrence, and identify how effective their usage is on the audience. Keywords: Advertisement, Commercials, Communication, Effects, Extralinguistics, Linguistics, Television, Stylistics. 1.0 Introduction Advertisement is a form of communication that is persuasive in nature; it involves deliberate effort on the part of producers to enlist the interest of consumers in their products. According to Knittlová, (1990, p. 72), advertisement is a form of persuasion that includes two interconnected actions: it is a form of communication and persuasion that intends to inform and influence people. The main aim of advertisement is to persuade consumers. To achieve this, advertisers employ different persuasion dominated communication strategies that will ensure that their products get the desire attention. Tanaka (1994) notes that the elements advertisement is made of are designed to achieve the ultimate aim of making the public aware and develop interest in their products. To further support this assertion, María A. D., quoting Durán (1982) argues that advertising is a phenomenon through which someone tries to communicate something to a group of people and whose aim is to persuade them to act in a certain way. Also, Mann, (1993, p. 4) sees advertising is a “non-personal communication of information, usually paid for and usually persuasive in nature, about products, service, or ideas by identified sponsors through various media.” The world of advertising keep changing to conform to the dynamism of societal and technological development. The modern day advertisement uses various media strategies to reach teeming consumers of goods and services. According to Waller (1999:288), the society has become more and more complex that advertising agencies have become more creative in order to ‘cut through the cluster’ to gain awareness. Supporting this, (Pennock-del Saz, 2009:124) notes that advertisers employ the use of sounds and images in TV advertisements as strategies to subtly manipulate viewers. The combination of voice and visuals in advertisement makes television a unique medium of advertisement where copy writers can creatively employ visual elements to attract the attention of viewers and create favourable attitude towards their products. 1.1 Visuals as Extralinguistic Feature of Television Advertisement The use of extralinguistic in communication is one of the dynamic innovation of advertisement and has become very popular as a selling strategies in advertising. Its usage in television is more effective because of the advantage of the combination of words, moving motion and visuals provided by medium, thereby making television one of the foremost and leading channels of information dissemination. Describing this, Mahmud (2014.8) says that advertising is a communicative process which has distinctive linguistic and visual elements, all used to make effective, the communication process. Also, Rambai (2008, p. 2) notes that the linguistic or the language part of an advertisement is supported usually by the extra or the non-linguistic features (visuals) in most cases. According to him, advertisements find expressions through mass media, and one of the most widely used and easily accessible medium of advertisement is the television because it provides powerful visual associations, using both linguistic and non-linguistic or extra-linguistic representations. The audio visual advantage of television is maximized by advertisers using the television medium to reach consumers because it makes the message of advertisement attractive and arrest the attention of the viewers. This is because, there is a brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by International Institute for Science, Technology and Education (IISTE): E-Journals