Examination of the Deployment of Verbal Lore in Yorùbá Advertisement Discourse on Radio

Abstract

Earlier studies on Yorùbá advertisements focused on advertisement culture and not on the literary aspects. Some have drawn their data from traditional advertisement while a few have drawn from both print and electronic media without giving due consideration to the aesthetics of verbal genre immanent in them. This study therefore sets out to fill this gap by critically examining the aesthetics of verbal element in Yorùbá Advertisement discourse on radio. The data for the study were drawn from advertisements collected from the archives and during air time on radio stations in some Yorùbá speaking states in Nigeria. The analytical procedure used in this study was mainly descriptive and this was guided by the series of data collected. To put our analysis in a proper perspective, the theory of ethnography of speaking was employed. Our findings reveal the aesthetic properties that are present in the artistic devices which help to add force and vividness to the advertisement and in turn evoke the response of the recipient.