New Media and Mass Communication www.iiste.org ISSN 2224-3267 (Paper) ISSN 2224-3275 (Online) Vol.85, 2019 39 The Use of Grammatical Elements to Achieve Persuasion in Advertising in the Print Media in Ghana Dr Richard T. Torto Department of Communication Studies, University of Cape coast, Cape Coast, Ghana Abstract Advertising is a type of communication whose ultimate goal is to persuade potential customers of the good qualities of products and services. There are various strategies that advertisers employ in order to persuade their customers to take purchasing decisions. One of them is the designing of an advertisement in which the pictorial images and other graphic designs are prominent. Another persuasive technique is the use of language to transmit the advertising message. In this regard, copywriters employ language in an attractive way to achieve persuasion in advertisements. It is worth postulating that although a number of persuasive strategies are available in advertising, language is integral in the communication of information. The focus of the current study was the use of grammatical elements in the English of advertisements by copywriters in the newspapers in Ghana for persuasive effect. The qualitative research design was employed and the study was underpinned by the Standard Theory of Generative Grammar. The current study proved that copywriters in the print media in Ghana employed imperative and declarative sentences, nominal phrases, the second person personal pronoun and modifiers such as adjectives and adverbs for persuasive effect. Keywords: Grammatical Units, Standard Theory, Advertising, Advertisement, Advertiser, Copywriter, English language, Print media, Persuasion, Communication. DOI: 10.7176/NMMC/85-05 Publication date: November 30 th 2019 1. Introduction Advertising had been employed for commercial purpose since historic time and it had undergone transformation over the years. In ancient Greece, Babylon, Egypt and the Roman Empire, advertising took the form of images, symbols and signs on walls and shops (Moriarty, Mitchell & Wells, 2009). This was to create the awareness about products and their places of manufacture. In ancient China, advertising was either verbal or by the use of musical instruments; later, advertising took the form of writings on signboards and posters. In the medieval period in Europe, advertising took the form of exhibition of finished products because many people could not read and write. Advertising was also like oral announcement at public places and this was to draw customers’ attention. Art work on rocks and walls for advertising started in India many centuries ago (Bhatia, 2000). Advertising underwent changes during the Renaissance Period in Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries when advancement in printing gave rise to literacy. With the advent of an innovative printing technology in Asia and Europe in the second half of the fifteenth century, printing was done on a large scale and people read extensively to broaden their intellectual horizon. Information dissemination was improved and advertising was given the needed publicity in the print media (Moriarty et al, ibid). Advertising, therefore, took the form of mass communication for commercial purposes in newspapers in America and England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries respectively. During the period of the Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth century, which saw a rise in the production of goods, advertising in the print media in the United States (US) and Europe helped manufacturers to disseminate information about their products to prospective buyers. Due to modern technological development and many mass media communication channels advertising has attained great heights; it forms an integral part of our world today (Cook, 1992). Advertising in modern time is a complex form of communication that aims at achieving positive responses from a targeted audience through different kinds of mass media. The print and electronic media and the Internet are employed extensively in the transmission of advertising messages today. These days, other forms of information dissemination instruments such as billboards, cell-phones, trains, aircrafts, buses, buildings, stadia and movies are employed as advertising media. Nowadays, advertisers choose the appropriate media to disseminate the advertising message. In advertising, the media are the channels or vehicles for the spread of the advertising information to the target audience. There are a number of media houses or companies that are engaged by advertisers. The media houses (newspaper corporations, radio stations, TV studios, billboard firms) across the globe have departments in charge of the sale of advertising space or air-time. The media companies provide consultancy services to advertisers in terms of the choice of channels of communication and the production of effective advertisements. These days commercial advertising is paid for by the advertisers; however, media organizations do not charge for public service advertising (Moriarty et al, 2009). In contemporary time, another essential component of advertising is the advertising agency. Its mandate is the actual construction of advertisements. The advertising agency is able to perform this task by employing