Search results

This article considers the features of the representation of the category of "quality" in advertising texts at the turn of the twentieth century. The author refers to daily and weekly regional periodicals of the time: Ural'skaia Zhizn', Ural'skij Listok, Ekaterinburgskaia Nedelia, Delovoi Korrespondent, and Ekaterinburgskaia Gazeta selectively reviewing issues from 1893 to 1917. Although it does not itself produce ideas and meanings as it only applies them for its own needs, advertising as a source is interesting primarily because it reflects the basic values and fashion trends of its era. The aim of the study is to analyze the possible ways of communicating about the quality of the product in a holistic way. In the course of the work, the author identifies 8 tactics for informing the potential buyer about the quality of goods, and several related categories, such as "authenticity", "authority", and "status". The research focuses on the peculiarities of the language design of information about the quality, as well as the analysis of the reasons for the choice by the authors of the advertising of a particular way of presenting this information. Much attention is also paid to the general characteristics of the development of an advertising text at the turn of the twentieth century. An analysis of the tactics of informing the buyer about the quality of the goods also helps draw an approximate "portrait" of the recipient of the advertisement — from rational people, for whom practicality and utility come first, to those who are ready to succumb to manipulation and persuasion choosing a product.

The article is focused on a series of advertising texts united by a common character and story. Having emerged in print advertising of the turn of the 19th–20thcenturies, such series can be seen as the first manifestations of the advertising series genre,in which, along with the dominant tendency to in-formativeness, typical for the early 20thcentury, new techniques appear, these strengthening the expressive and manipulative components of the text. The advertisements analyzed in the paper are texts placedin the regional newspaper Uralskaya Zhizn(1903). In the array of the advertising texts examined, only one series united by the story and the character, published in November-December 1903, was found. It is devoted to the cigarettes of the Laferm company.Instead of the same text repeatedly published for several months, which was typical of advertisements of that period, the reader receives a new text in each issue. The texts are de-signed and laid out so as to resemble telegrams, and each individual text is stylized as a rayosh folk verse. Together they form a kind of travel novel or travel notes in verse. Important components of the text are the character (a representative of the company) and his interaction with the readers. It is they, not the product itself, that come to the fore. The non-provision of detailed information about the product is also an innova-tive feature of evolving advertising. The character uniting all the texts is presented by the authors as a sym-bol of the advertised products and the Association, which indicates not only a new form of advertising but also a more complex way of presenting goods, specifically the basics of brand formation.