Sold on Language
How Advertisers Talk to You and What This Says About You
By: Julie Sedivy, Greg Carlson
March 15, 2011
Format: Paperback, 330 pages
ISBN-10: 0470683090
ISBN-13: 978-0470683095
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
We rarely truly understand exactly how and why we respond to advertising", write language scientists Julie Sedivy and Greg Carlson, in their perceptive and groundbreaking book Sold on Language: How Advertisers Talk to You and What This Says About You. The authors describe how intense marketplace competition forges the very language and word choices that advertisers and marketers use to persuade potential customers to purchase the offered goods and services.
Julie Sedivy (photo left) and Greg Carlson recognize that consumers are inundated with advertising messages and images on a continual basis, resulting in information overload. With so many marketing messages flooding the media, and people's daily lives, advertisers have applied a form of reductionism to create impressions through brand images and language itself. The evoking of a brand name is designed to create certain emotional responses. More than images, the power of language and the subtle use of linguistics, accent, and word emphasis form even deeper impressions in the consumer's unconscious mind. In the end, according to the authors, these endless messages don't provide limitless choice, but perhaps even the end of the idea of choice itself.
Greg Carlson (photo left) and Julie Sedivy understand that twenty-first commerce provides seemingly inexhaustible choices of products competing fiercely for the attention of consumers. There is a problem that arises, according to the authors, that more supposed choices may really mean less real choice. The advertisers utilize every aspect of psychology and language at their disposal to convince people to buy their wares. For the authors, choice is really an illusion not only perpetrated by advertising messages, but also within the mind of what the authors call the unconscious consumer. Through various language usage forms, patterns, and image creation, the mind of the potential customer is penetrated and transformed in ways both covert and overt in nature. The power and marketing potential of every word is considered by advertisers, and the unconscious power of language forms the basis of the persuasion. Words may not be used in the everyday manner, but their very usage creates familiar images, whether true or a false illusion. The authors demonstrate how to understand the power of language, and provide the means to counter their seductive messages.
For me, the power of the book is how Julie Sedivy and Greg Carlson dive beneath the surface of the ubiquitous torrent of advertising messages, and provide a rich analysis of the persuasive power of words. Through a combination of linguistic theory, the latest scientific research, and real world examples, the authors present a comprehensive portrait of the impressions made at an unconscious level through words, sounds, images, and even accents. The authors point out how people believe they are making rational choices based on product features and benefits, but that the opposite is true.
Through the emotional and unconscious effect of language, the myth of rational decision making and even of choice is shattered. Choice, for the authors, is merely a well groomed illusion. Words have many layers of meanings, and different regions and personalities perceive words and their emotional impact differently. The concentrating of phrases into words and then into sounds all have an unconscious effect on the potential buyer. The words control the purchasing behavior of the consumer through the unconscious. The authors provide the defenses necessary to pull the curtain back on the use of language, words, shades of meaning, sounds, and accents. This book is self defense tool to sift through the surfeit of advertising messages, to help consumers form real choices in their buying decisions.
I highly recommend the landmark and must read book Sold on Language: How Advertisers Talk to You and What This Says About You by Julie Sedivy and Greg Carlson, to anyone seeking an open, honest, as well an engaging study into the nature of advertising messages, brands, and the words used to market products. This eye opening book will change the way readers approach advertising messages and the illusion that the market offers real choice.
Read the well reasoned and strongly researched book Sold on Language: How Advertisers Talk to You and What This Says About You by Julie Sedivy and Greg Carlson, and discover the inside world of advertising and its use of the subtle nuances of words and language, to induce us to buy products. You will never think of advertising, language, and the supposed range of product choice in the same way again.
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