International Research Journal of Applied and Basic Sciences
© 2013 Available online at www.irjabs.com
ISSN 2251-838X / Vol, 6 (2): 267-270
Science Explorer Publications
The Study of Persuasion language in Life Insurance
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Shirin boubehrezh1, Maryam Iraji1
1. Department of Foreign Language, Islamic Azad University of Tehran, Central Branch, Tehran, Iran
Corresponding Author email:[email protected]
ABSTRACT: The main objective of this survey is to investigate persuasion techniques used in life
insurance advertisements, beside it discusses about life insurance advertisements from linguistics
point of view. The two hypotheses are that in life insurance advertisements among linguistic tools
and semantic relations, words with positive semantic loads impacts customers to buy life insurance
policy and also persuasion techniques such as fear, intensity and rhetorical questions are used more
than other techniques in life insurance.50advertisementschoserandomly and then analyzed
according to the hypothesis of the current study. Microsoft office excel used to analyze the data. The
results of the study confirm that the usage of the words with positive semantic loads, omission of the
verb and number impacts customers in life insurance advertising. Moreover it confirms that
persuasion techniques such as association, explicit claims, repetition, warm and fuzzy, fear
euphemism are used more than other techniques in life insurance advertisement.
Key words: Persuasion, life Insurance, Advertisement, Advertising Language, Propaganda
INTRODUCTION
In the world today, Commercial advertising is one of the factors indicating economic growth of the
societies. Its importance in various industries has been increasing due to growing productions and
competitions. At first glance, the appearance of the advertising may attract your attention more than the written
or spoken language used, but this fact that advertiser can fix their desired points and goals in your mind by the
usages of language to persuade you is undeniable. Whatever they inspire you by a few- seconds advertising or
a few-words slogan, would be unconsciously stick in to your mind, if professionally designed.(shafie,2002)
Advertisement needs a certain language to get the sympathy from the consumers. The language that is
used must be suitable with the consumers. Ogilvy in Weilbacher (1984) argues that "if you try to persuade
people to do something or to buy something, it seems to me that you should use their language." It means the
language they use every day and also the language in which they think. So, the advertisement matter should
have high creativities language and strong imaginations to make the advertisement more interesting. Besides,
the language of advertisement contains illustration and special power to persuade and to control the
consumers’ behavior. Then, it is used correct diction in order to convey the message of advertisement correctly
(Umi Fadhilah,2010)
Now a days, there are varieties of risks and hazards that endanger humans life. Life insurance as a
way for enabling people to encounter these sort of risk and securing their future plays a key role and so
increasing public awareness of it's significance in life is highly recommended. In this study, the importance of
language in persuading prospects to buy life insurance policies took in to account and persuasion techniques
in life insurance advertisements has been investigated.
Review of literature
In this section the concept of persuasion, persuasion techniques , language tools of persuasion and
life insurance are reviewed.
Persuasion
Persuasion is the influence of beliefs, attitudes, intentions, motivations, or behaviors. Persuasion is a
process aimed at changing a person's (or a group's) attitude or behavior toward some event, idea, object, or
other person(s), by using written or spoken words to convey information, feelings, or reasoning, or a
combination thereof.(www. en.wikipedia.org,2013(
Keraf (2004) defines persuasion as an art of verbal with the intention to assure someone to do
something appropriate with the speaker’s purpose for the present time. It means the purpose of persuasion is
Intl. Res. J. Appl. Basic. Sci. Vol., 6 (2), 267-270, 2013
the speaker tries to persuade the listener to act something with no violence and coercion. So, in persuasion the
speaker needs the efforts for stimulating the addressee in taking decision. (Kraf, 2004; Umi Fadhilah, 2010)
Persuasion is a process to change attitude or behavior, and opinion. Persuasion occurs only through
cooperation between sender and receiver. The focus of persuasion is not only on the sender, the message, or
the receiver, but all of them are equally focused on. All of them have to make cooperative in making a
persuasive process so, it can be said that persuasion is a result of the combined efforts of source and receiver.
(Larson, 1986; Umi Fadhilah, 2010).
Persuasion techniques
According to the Greek Philosopher Aristotle, persuasion could be brought about by the speaker’s use
of three modes of “rhetoric”: Ethos, Pathos and Logos.
Ethos (Greek for ‘character’) in rhetoric is the demonstration of a communicator’s character and/or
credentials. The persuasion lies in the power and authority of the speaker. Aristotle considered it the most
important attribute of any communication. The audience has to find the writer or speaker’s character credible
and trustworthy — otherwise, anything said from that point will not be persuasive.
Pathos (Greek for ‘suffering’ or ‘experience’) is an appeal based on emotion. The intent is to motivate
people to take action.
Logos, or appeal through reasoning, was considered the most important appeal by Aristotle. It refers to
the internal consistency of the message—the clarity of the claim, the logic of its reasons, and the effectiveness
of its supporting evidence. (Fudold, 2001; Aristotle, 2005)
Persuasion techniques divided in to three levels: basic, intermediate and advanced. Basic techniques
are easily identified in many media examples, identifying many intermediate techniques may require more
critical distance and more abstraction and judgment may be required to identify the advanced techniques.
Basic persuasion techniques are association, bandwagon, beautiful people, bribery, celebrities,
experts, explicit claims, fear, humor, intensity, maybe, plain folks, repetition, testimonials, warm and fuzzy.
Intermediate techniques are the big lie, charisma, euphemism, Extrapolation, Flattery, Rhetorical
questions, scientific evidence, Simple solution, Slippery slope, Symbols.
Advanced persuasion techniques are Ad hominem. Analogy, Card stacking, Cause vs. Correlation,
Denial, Diversion, Group dynamics, Majority belief, Scapegoating, Straw man, Timing.(www.nmmlp.org, 2001)
Linguistic tools of persuasion
Lapšanskă (2006) studied the language of advertisements with the concentration on the linguistic
means. He analyzed advertisements from four linguistic aspects naming:
 phonological aspect which he referred to mnemonic devices such as rhyme, rhythm, alliteration ,
assonance ,graphic aspects of a text, transliteration and homophone as phonological tools for
advertising
 Lexical and morphological aspect with concentration on typical characteristics of the vocabulary of
advertising and most commonly used figures of speech including verb phrase, noun phrase,
adjectives, numeral ,foreign words , Epithet, Formation of new words and phrases, idiomatic
constructions and collocation.
 Syntactic aspect which includes sentence type and sentence structure.
 Semantic aspect (Lapsanska,2006)
Life insurance
ayat karim in his book "generalities of insurance" define life insurance as follow:
Life insurance is one of the most important filed of individual insurance. Legally, life insurance is a
contract whereby the insurers in return for receiving premiums are obliged to pay a certain amount of money
(benefit or pension) at the specific time to an insured or a third party designated by him in case of insured
survival or death. Technically life insurance is an insurance operations which its related liabilities are functions
of human life time. (Karimi, 2003)
The soliciting or purchase of life insurance is an invitation to a specific field of experience we call it the
world of the insured .Buying insurance is an act of love. It is done because we want to take care of someone
we cherish. The invitation is to make a provision, not to grab an opportunity. The context is one of preservation
rather than a profit, of continuity rather than payoff. It is a case for peace rather than titillation. (Kutty, 2010)
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METHOD OF RESEARCH
The purpose of this study was to investigate persuasion language and linguistic tools in life insurance
advertisement. To do this, 50 life advertisements randomly chose and then analyzed in terms of the hypothesis
of the current study. In these randomly selected advertisements, persuasion techniques (40 techniques) and
linguistic tools studied. It is needed to add that, the design of this study was descriptive in nature.
Data Analysis
In this section, three advertisements are presented as samples for the related analysis of persuasion
language and linguistic tools in this study.
1. If you died today, who would fund your family's future?
Buy life insurance instantly online with:
No medical exam
No agent
Same day coverage
Persuasion techniques: rhetorical question, fear, bribery
The first technique is rhetorical question which is a question designed for getting us agree with the
speaker. This technique is seen in the question" If you died today, who would fund your family's future?" The
second technique is fear. Advertisements use fear to sell us products that claim to prevent or fix the problem. In
the above mentioned question usages of fear is crystal clear. The third techniques are bribery. This technique
tries to persuade prospect to buy a product by promising to give them something else. Advertiser in this
advertisement state that in the case prospect buy life insurance policy from the company, there would be no
obligation to pass medical exam to evaluate their risk of insurability. Moreover, special offers of" no agent" and
"the same day coverage" are two other examples of bribery.
Linguistic tools: interrogative sentence, imperative sentence and declarative sentences, schematic
pattering, word with negative semantic load.
2. Secure his tomorrow
When it comes to your child's future
Aspire for the best
Ayala life
Linguistic tools: association, intensity, charisma, timing
persuasion technique of association tries to link a product, service, or idea with something already liked
or desired by the target audience, such as fun, pleasure, beauty, security, intimacy, success, wealth, etc that is
used in sentences such as "secure his tomorrow and "aspire for the best". The trace of intensity technique can
be seen in utilizing the superlative adjective "the best ".according to charisma technique, Persuaders can be
effective simply by appearing firm, bold, strong, and confident. Here persuader used superlative adjective "the
best" referring to their company and their product so making use of charisma is obvious.
Linguistic tools: imperative sentence, words with positive semantic loads.
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
association
bandwagon
beautiful people
bribery
celebrities
experts
explicit claims
fear
humor
intensity
maybe
plain folks
repetition
testimonials
warm and fuzzy
big lie
charisma
euphemism
Extrapolation
Flattery
Glittering generalities
Name-calling
New
Nostalgia
Rhetorical questions
Scientific evidence
Simple solution
Slippery slope
Symbols
Ad hominem
Analogy
Card stacking
Cause vs. Correlation
Denial
Diversion
Group dynamics
Majority belief
Scapegoating
Straw man
Timing
Series1
Figure 1. Frequency of persuasion techniques used in life insurance advertisements
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Intl. Res. J. Appl. Basic. Sci. Vol., 6 (2), 267-270, 2013
CONCLUSIONS
In this study 50 life insurance advertisements were randomly selected and analyzed according to
linguistic tools and persuasion techniques.
The analysis showed that in the majority of advertisements (38 out of 50) ,Words with positive semantic
loads and adjectives play key role in persuading prospects. Beside, In some of them schematic patterning,
ellipsis, number and auxiliary verbs used. Of course in a few of them words with negative semantic loads,
passive verbs, conditional sentences and figurative meaning were applied. Sentences were almost in
declarative type. The mentioned result confirm the first hypothesis that among linguistic tools and semantic
relations, words with positive semantic loads impacts customers to buy life insurance policy.
Regarding the second hypothesis about persuasion techniques used in life insurance advertisements
,the result shows that among 40 persuasion techniques ,association with frequency of 31, explicit claim with
frequency of 19 , warm and fuzzy with frequency of 14,repetition with frequency of 12,fear ,euphemism, simple
solution and timing with frequency of 10 observed more than other techniques .so the second hypothesis is
rejected and expect fear the frequencies of two other technique naming intensity and rhetorical questions
were not substantial.
REFERENCES
Aristotle. 2005. Rhetoric Book III. Translated by W, Rhys Roberts. Stillwell:Digirids.com Publishing.
Fudold Lynda L.2010. Handbook on Persuasion Skills. Covington: Advanced Communications Group,Inc.
Karimi A.2001.generalities of insurance .Tehran:Bimeh Markazi publication.
Keraf G. 2002. Diksi dan Gaya Bahasa. Jakarta: Gramedia Pustaka Utama.
Kutty Shashidharan K. 2010.Managing Life Insurance. India:Prentice Hall of India Private Limited.
Lapšanskă J.2006.the language of advertising with the concentration on the linguistic means and the analysis of the advertising slogan.
M.A thesis of English Language and Literature. Bratislava: Slovakia.
Larson UC. 1986. Persuasion Reception and Responsibility. California: Woodsworth Publishing Company.
Shafie S.2001-2002.Discourse Analysis Study of commercial advertisements in Persian language. M.A thesis of linguistics. Tehran: Islamic
Azad University, Central Branch.
Umi F.2010. A Discourse Analysis on the Persuasive Technique Used in DRTV Advertisement. M.A Thesis of English Letter and
Language. Malang:The State Islamic University Maulana Malik Ibrahim.
www.en.wikipedia.org.
www.nmmlp.org.
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