Advertising language: A pragmatic approach to cigarette advertisements in Indonesia

Abstract

In Indonesia, it has been a public knowledge that cigarette is dangerous to consume. However, the involvement of advertisement and its huge economic benefit has driven the government to freely let cigarette be widely promoted; nevertheless the image of the cigarette would not be shown on the screen as per agreement with advertisers. These series of complexities in the cigarette advertisements have attracted the authors to investigate the way cigarettes are promoted without explicitly exposing them. Using inferential pragmatic approach (Sperber & Wilson, 2002), this research reveals that the language of advertisements operate subtly at the level of cognition and comprehension to persuade smokers.