Analysis of Linguistic codes used by Algerian Advertisers in Social Media

Abstract

Advertising language has been long studied in sociolinguistics and other disciplines, and each study focuses on a specific function. The use of languages such as Arabic, French, English or Arabic /French code switching is a strategy used by the Algerian online advertisers in the domain of advertising. This work aims at analysing at the linguistic properties of advertising codes in terms of Arabic / French bilingualism, code switching as well as the diglossic situation in Algerian online context. It sheds light on the linguistic elements that contribute to create persuasive and attractive advertising message. Advertising imposes itself upon the audiences. Hence, to collect reliable data, the investigation was based upon two research tools. Firstly; we implement a questionnaire which is directed to randomly selected people from Ain Temouchent speech community in order to check their attitudes and opinions about advertising language in social networks.The data collection and results are presented in tables and charts which show the different rates of participants’ responses .Their explanations helps the investigation and provide more information. .The second tool is a corpus of some selected advertisements in order to examine the linguistic features that are used as means of persuasion .The analysis and the interpretation of results for both sides of the research support the hypothesis that Algerian advertisers rely on using their language carefully and employ purposefully the linguistic devices in order to create attractive and persuasive advertising message. Furthermore, both quantitative and qualitative methods serve the phase of data collection along with checking the attitudes towards the language of online advertising. The sampling is varied according to age, gender and educational background.