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Changing Genre Conventions in Historical English News Discourse
Edited by Birte Bös and Lucia Kornexl
[Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics 5] 2015
► pp. 81–102

Changing genre conventions and socio-cultural change

Person-mention in 19th-century English advertisements

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The inclusion of advertisers, audiences and other persons, i.e. person-mention, in late 18th- and early 19th-century English advertisements is a salient feature of advertising style. As person-mention decreases during the century, this study explores how the change progresses from 1785 to 1880 in two London newspapers, The Times and The Morning Post, and what functions person-mention serves. The results show that person-mention established an interpersonal relationship where the advertiser attended to the needs of the audience, but towards the end of the century the advertiser-audience dyad lost its importance as a persuasive strategy and advertisements focused on the products only. To understand these linguistic changes, the genre is discussed in the context of 19th-century sociocultural changes, employing an integrationist sociological model.

Keywords: 19th-century English advertisements, advertiser-audience relation, person-mention, sociocultural context
Published online: 24 July 2015
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ahs.5.04pal
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