An analysis of language features in english advertisements

4.1.2 Imperative Sentences

As mentioned before, persuading is one of the most important functions of advertising. The final aim of advertising is to arouse the consumers’ desire and make them consume the advertised product. So imperative sentences which are grammatically featured as “pertaining to, or constituting the mood that express a command or request” (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language 1981) are extensively used.

Here are some examples:
Obey your thirst. (Spirit)
Take time to indulge. (Ice-cream of Nescafe)
Come to where the flavor is——Marlboro Country. (Marlboro)
Just do it. (Nike)
Take TOSHIBA, take the world. (TOSHIBA)
Start ahead. (Rejoice)
All these imperative sentences are short, encouraging and forceful. They are used to arouse audiences’ wants or encourage them to buy something immediately. As in an order tone,??? the audience will follow it unconsciously. As Leech (1966:80) mentioned “…the imperative in public communication does not suffer from the implication of its use in private contexts. We are used to receiving exhortations and directives in the imperative mood from all manner of public sources: road sighs(‘Halt at major road ahead’); public transport notices(‘Do not lean out of the window’); instructions from Government departments…”So Most of the commands are really to the point and make the readers very interested in the products or services. Thus, it stimulates the desire and creates the consumption.