Abstract (eng)
This master thesis deals with the linguistic schemes in television advertising for children, which air on television programs for children. The main focal point lies on rhetorical devices, which can be found in television advertising.
The theoretical part of this master thesis focuses on the definition of classic rhetorical devices. In addition, the arrangement of television advertising for children in particular is described. Advertising competency of children and their television usage was also part of the theoretical embedding.
The methodical part implies the description of the content analysis by Philipp Mayring (2008) to analyze selections of television ads for children regarding their linguistic schemes. This was done based on their transcription. For the analysis, 17 television ads were chosen from two german-speaking channels, called “Nickelodeon” and “Super RTL”. The recording of these two channels took place during the first week in March 2015.
The results show, that there are mainly rhetorical devices in the analyzed commercials put to use, which focus on the memorability of the advertising messages. Especially the rhetorical devices emphasis and parallelization were used. Also, through repetitions of certain words or sentences, they can be more memorable and are used on this regards. In relation to the emphases, favorable assessments are often used. These enable the product to be presented as something special.
Anglicism is also a popular means of linguistic constructions. In what way this can be meaningful in television ads for children is being called into question in this thesis. Moreover, some rhetorical devices are used, which children may not understand in a proper way, such as exaggerations and ambiguity.
Finally the question rises, in what way the usage of these rhetorical devices in television commercials for children could have impact on this particular target group. This could be covered in further research.