Abstract :
This study is going to investigate the language style of classified advertisements of job vacancies in order to
understand how advertisers manipulate language in convincing the job-seekers to apply for the advertised jobs.
Furthermore, the study tries to examine the ways that advertisements’ language may be concisely used to convey
the meaning in the fewest words and avoid blurring the job seekers. To gain a clear picture of the form and content
of job advertisements the views of (Lunde, 1974) and (Fairclough, 1989) are exploited to clarify how job
advertisements may be perceived as a class of communicative events in order to communicate via the medium of
language with potential job seekers and persuade them towards applying for the advertised jobs. The data for this
qualitative study which came from the local English newspaper (Star) in the month of August were analyzed
through content analysis. Being grounded in Lund (1974), who believes that an advertisement should: attract
attention, arouse interests, stimulate desires, create conviction and get action, the sample advertisements were
examined and the results revealed that all are in accordance with Lund’s AIDEA formula. An analysis of the
surface structure of the samples did not reveal how the basic structure of English sentences was adapted. The
spaces allocated to these types of advertisements were so limited. Thus, the advertisers manipulate language in a
way that they can convey their purposes with the use of minimum words. This may only be achieved by the use of
the key words to convey the message and nominalizations.
