International Journal of Language & Linguistics

‘Deal or No Deal’: Reduplication as a Form Creativity in the Language of Advertising
Opeoluwa Labiran, Joan Solesi, Ercharu Ethan, Tolulope Sogunle, Charles Ogbulogo

Abstract
Research in the area of syntactic patterns has reviewed the paucity of material in the analysis of reduplication as a creative method of language use. In addition, there is a spate of internal controversies over the place of reduplication as a style option in language. These two realities provide the impetus to this work. The study engages descriptive-analytical research using advert copies that exhibit reduplication structures. The method used was textual analysis. The textual analysis involves the description of the structures with emphasis on the feature specification of the lexical items. On the other hand, the theory adopted is the minimalist program. It incorporates the process of numeration, computation and operation merge for analysis. The study discovered that reduplication is a major source of creativity in advertising language. Thus, this discovery tends to provide counter-evidence that repetition is a mark of language incompetence.

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