Stylistic Structuring: Syntactic Patterns of Advertising Slogans in Bamenda Urban Council of the North West Region of Cameroon (Published)
A slogan is a short, catchy and memorable phrase designed to capture the importance of a product. It portrays the brand’s identity, creates a sense of likability in the brand name and is used to convey a message about the service of the product it represents. The article was designed to investigate the structural patterns of clauses and groups used in slogans collected from billboards, bar walls and doorposts, put up by different business establishments in Bamenda, in the North West Region of Cameroon. The study is based on the Rank Scale systematic approach of Halliday. The results reveal that there are different kinds of structures such as, the declarative, imperative, nonfinite verbal clause, parallel structure, nominal group, prepositional group and adverb group used in the slogans, and these structures, in the different ways they function, all act in persuading the consumer to buy their products.
Keywords: Bamenda, Clause, Group, Patterns, Slogan, Stylistics