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Article published In:
Language and Dialogue
Vol. 7:3 (2017) ► pp.360–386

The language of Akan herbal drug sellers and advertisers

| University of Ghana (Ghana)
This paper addresses the language and pragmatic strategies used by Akan herbal drug sellers to persuade would-be-buyers. It adopts the theoretical framework of Weigand’s Mixed Game Model (MGM) and defines persuasion as a variable of competence-in-performance, and language use as the basis of dialogic interaction. It investigates how sellers employ politeness, honorifics, humour, digression, personification, proverbs, metaphors and hyperbole in dialogic action games. The herbal drug sellers are grouped into three: (a) those normally plying on Ghana’s major roads and at bus stations, (b) those who are on radio and TV and (c) those who advertise on radio and TV. We will discuss excerpts of five recordings in the Akan language and translated into English.
Keywords: Akan, mixed game model, persuasion, advertising, rhetorical strategies, commissives, directives
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: Persuasive language and advertising
    • 1.1Theoretical framework: Herbal drug in the Mixed Game Model
    • 1.2The three constitutive principles in the Mixed Game
    • 1.3Emotions
    • 1.4Individual imprint
    • 1.5Socio-cultural imprint
  • 2.Persuasion and advertising
    • 2.1Adverts as a business mixed dialogic game
    • 2.2The Akan people and herbal drug selling
    • 2.3Methodology
  • 3.Samples of herbal drug selling discourse
  • 4.Pragmatic and rhetorical analysis of herbal drug selling language
    • a.Hyperbole
    • b.Repetition and parallelism
    • c.Humour
    • d.Indirection and euphemism
    • e.Deixis
    • f.Honorifics and personification
    • g.Group identity
    • h.Code-mixing
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 27 November 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ld.7.3.04agy
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