Julie Sedivy & Greg Carlson 
Sold on Language 
How Advertisers Talk to You and What This Says About You

As citizens of capitalist, free-market societies, we tend to
celebrate choice and competition. However, in the 21st
century, as we have gained more and more choices, we have also
become greater targets for persuasive messages from advertisers who
want to make those choices for us.

In Sold on Language, noted language scientists Julie
Sedivy and Greg Carlson examine how rampant competition shapes the
ways in which commercial and political advertisers speak to us. In
an environment saturated with information, advertising messages
attempt to compress as much persuasive power into as small a
linguistic space as possible. These messages, the authors reveal,
might take the form of a brand name whose sound evokes a certain
impression, a turn of phrase that gently applies peer pressure, or
a subtle accent that zeroes in on a target audience. As more and
more techniques of persuasion are aimed squarely at the corner of
our mind which automatically takes in information without conscious
thought or deliberation, does ‘endless choice’ actually mean the
end of true choice?

Sold on Language offers thought-provoking insights into
the choices we make as consumers and citizens – and the
choices that are increasingly being made for us.

Click here for more discussion and debate on the authors’
blog:

href=’http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sold-language’>http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sold-language

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Table of Content

About the Authors.

Preface. 1 The Power of Choice.

2 The Unconscious Consumer.

3 The Attentional Arms Race.

4 We Know What You’re Thinking.

5 Why Ads Don’t Say What They Mean (Or Mean What They
Say).

6 Acting Out.

7 Divide and Conquer.

8 The Politics of Choice.

Sources.

Index.

About the author

Julie Sedivy is Adjunct Professor of Linguistics and
Psychology at the University of Calgary, Canada. She has published
dozens of research articles on her experimental studies of language
comprehension and production in children and adults. She has served
as Associate Editor for the journal Linguistics and
Philosophy, and as a consulting editor for the Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition.

Greg Carlson is Professor of Linguistics, Philosophy, and
Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Rochester, US. He
has authored or co-authored more than a hundred articles on natural
language semantics and psycholinguistics. He is the Editor of
Language, the journal of the Linguistic Society of
America.