Advertising Texts in Gambling Discourse in Modern Spanish

Анотація

Advertising texts about gambling are full of verbal and non-verbal means of influence on the reader. Gambling  discourse  is  represented  by  oral  and  written  texts including advertisement. Gambling, especially lottery and sport bets are very popular in Spain. In  Modern Linguistics different types of professional discourses are studied, though there are no investigations devoted to gambling discourse. Gambling represents business and professional activity with its special

terminology and sphere of its use that is gambling discourse.  The purpose of the paper is to analyze lexical, grammatical, syntactical and graphic peculiarities in texts advertising gambling in the Spanish Language.  Methods used in the investigation are contextual and interpretational analyses.  Results. Verbal and non-verbal components of advertising texts influence on the reader creating an attractive image of gambling, different card games, bets and lotteries persuading to play a game. The emotive influence on the potential players is made by metaphors, epithets, personification, imperative sentences, rhetorical questions, graphic means such as colour, images, symbols, italics, etc. As the result of complex interaction of verbal and non-verbal means positive image of gambling is created.  Originality. Besides verbal and non-verbal means of direct influence on the reader we single out the means of indirect influence such as interviews with the person who won a lottery, videos which show happy lottery winners with positive emotions.  Conclusion. So, a game of chance is a product of gambling which is attractively presented in advertisement on websites, in special journals and books. Oral advertisements of gambling in videos can be the object of further investigation, where non-verbal component is revealed in prosodic means of speech (tempo, intonation, logical stress).