Remarks on the Style of Commercial Web Texts

2007-11-10 21:43 | 08. Writing for the Web

De Beaugrande (1984) has argued that a purely (text) linguistic analysis of language artefacts cannot account for the rich communicative contexts that define style. In fact, there is no norm or grammar that characterises a given passage of text to be stylistically relevant. In other words, the manipulations that one could perform on a surface text’s linguistic or grammatical structure may barely affect the style of the text at all. Changes on a text may rather influence the style via the context and less via the linguistic structure. Consequently, a linguistic discussion on the style of writing should somewhat be hold in terms of text being an element of discourse than text being a structural unit of language. Other contributions to that discussion may then come from the fields of pragmatics and semantics.

Thus, I will not get deeper into the topic than dropping a few remarks on the pros and cons of using subjective or figurative language for ‘Webvertising’. There may be also other stylistic means for selling products and services through Web texts, but I shall rather focus on subjective and figurative language, since I cannot mention them all.

Objectiveness vs. Marketese

Indeed, the arguments in literature concerning style on the Web are somewhat ambiguous. Morkes & Nielsen (1997), for instance, have found out that users generally “detest anything that seems like marketing fluff or overly hyped language (“marketese”) and prefer factual information”. Thus, they have recommended employing objectiveness as a principle in any writing on the Web. However, the context that underlies e-commerce Web sites is of course much different compared to e.g. a research institute’s Web site. Objectiveness is relative in the business.

This accounts for the world of news, too. Fowler (1991, p 10) has stated that “all news is always reported from some particular angle”, and that “what is being claimed about news can equally be claimed about any representational discourse” (Fowler 1991, p 10). The argumentation throughout his book Language in the News (1991) wholly confirms that even conventional print news never consist of “value-free reflection of ‘facts’” (p 4). Hence, news traditionally serves to deliver a message ‘between the lines’, an author’s true interest beyond giving the pure facts. Even if corporate news texts on the homepage of a Web site shall not come up with world or political intelligence, the texts’ characteristics are entirely arranged to constructively pattern the message of which they speak – advertising and promotion.

Promotional Writing Works Nicely on the Web

Even Morkes & Nielsen (1997) had to confess that promotional writing is indeed “the style most commonly found on the Web today” (Morkes & Nielsen 1997, see also Nielsen 1997a). In fact, the Web belongs to the media that are most prone to be used for advertising, besides television and radio. This is simply because companies can reach so many customers via the Web with fairly little expenses, whereas comparable broadcastings for an international campaign would cost tremendous amounts of money, which is an economic problem even for ‘global players’. For many companies such ‘marketese’ language (e.g. “The Power to Be Your Best.” by Apple Inc.) will be the only key to selling their products, because barely objective presentation of facts would only hardly motivate people to buy goods spontaneously on the Web, at the sight of the complex actions that need to be performed as e.g. using an online shopping cart.

Web authors somehow must achieve to inspire the visitors, though. The reasons given by authors from usability research to boycott any promotional writing style refer to the findings that Web users “want to get the straight facts”, and that “credibility suffers when users clearly see that the site exaggerates” (Nielsen 1997a).

Figurative Language Helps Visitors to Get Things Easier

Nonetheless, the Web visibly has been recognized as an advertising medium, and parts of the literature on writing for the Web have also realised that colourful and imaginative language can do a good job in selling products, even on the Web (see e.g. Lackerbauer 2003). Using figures of speech (such as metaphors, personification, or synecdoche) is in fact a key method on the whole domain of advertising (see Dyer 1982, see also Tanaka 1994). According to Dyer (1982), such language can help customers to comprehend things, which otherwise may be difficult to understand. Using a ‘marketese’ style for corporate Web texts in general may thus support the consumers to make a decision on buying the product or at least motivates them to get to know more about certain things.

However, most of the authors (see Kilian 1999, Nielsen 1997a, Morkes & Nielsen 1997) agree on not making use of such metaphors or clichés that are bound to a particular local, cultural, or social context (e.g. referring to a musician as ‘the second Herbert Grönemeyer’ trying to sell his new album). The same accounts for the use of humour as well as jargon and expert language (see also Lackerbauer 2003).

All in all, figurative language – among other stylistic means – is considered useful for promotional texts. But it must also be selected consciously in order to work elsewhere on the Web.

Remarks on the Style of Commercial Web Texts

Objectiveness vs. Marketese

Promotional Writing Works Nicely on the Web

Figurative Language Helps Visitors to Get Things Easier

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