I’m starting to get a little bit worried about the rash of strangely written and borderline grammatically incorrect advertising slogans in the media. This is especially true of fast food advertisements. The slogan that bothers me the most is McDonald’s “i’m lovin’ it.” I understand how dropping the g makes the slogan less impersonal and more relaxed, but the lowercase i really irks me. What’s the point?
Other celebrated and effective examples include Apple’s classic “Think different,” and their more recent description of the new iPod touch as “The funnest iPod ever.” Even the Obama campaign’s “Change we can believe in” ends in a preposition.
The worst thing about these slogans is that the television viewing public is exposed to them on a daily basis. Many of these slogans are not necessarily incorrect, but they violate several rules we try to teach our students in efforts to improve the clarity and effectiveness of their oral and written communication. I can’t help but wonder about the extent to which these slogans are negatively impacting the communication skills of the viewing public. The advertising industry seems to be on a mission to legitimize incorrectness.
Interesting post, David.
The “I’m Lovin’ It” slogan is actually a part of McDonald’s zeroing in on the “urban” youth market. Begs a couple of questions, doesn’t it.
There are other instances where words are used in advertising in nonstandard ways, in order to reflect how many people pronounce them, Case in point: Budweiser once marketed “Artic Ice” beer, dropping the the first “c” in “arctic” according to common though non-standard usage.
One of my profs once said of language that what it does is change. Language always and constantly mutates and changes. Language change happens according to common, popular usage and happens more slowly when there is a codified set of rules that determine correct usage, spelling, pronunciation, etc. What we are seeing here, we can argue, is advertising as helping accelerate possibly lasting changes in standard written English.
Reply to Mikhail
“Change in which we can believe” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it…I’m guessing the lowercase i in the McDonald’s slogan was to make it look more like a letter I than a lowercase L? silly, but maybe it was a result of the font they selected…
Reply to D'Arcy Norman
“I know shit’s bad right now with all that starvin’ bullshit. And the dust storms. And we runnin’ out of French Fries and burrito coverings. But I got a solution.”Yes, that is a quote form “Idiocracy” a rather bad movie about a terrifying future, which I fear is not that far away when I see the language bastardization all around me. I know that language changes all the time, but the was it’s been happening lately… I’m not lovin it.
Reply to Agnieszka Kajrukszto