Promises in advertisements (A Case study on five print advertisements)
Promises in advertisements (A Case study on five print advertisements)

Summary/Abstract: The study aims at placing the speech act of promising on the illocutionary force scale by determining whether promises in advertisements are closer to what J.L.Austin called acts of saying or rather to acts of doing. In addition to this, it also investigates the question whether, from the perspective of the performative and the speech act theories, one could talk about unfair advertisements because of the ungrounded promises they make, and thus embarks upon determining first what are the necessary conditions for making a valid promise (felicity conditions) so as to afterwards decide whether any of these conditions are not met in the case of some advertisements. Aside the theoretical approach, the study also favours a practical approach by assessing the main theoretical points against the concrete example of five print advertisements, which it analyses in their locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts, on the one hand, and in the felicity conditions that determine the validity of the act of promising, on the other hand, so as to finally establish whether the felicity of a promise is dependent on the accomplishment of the promised action.

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