“More оf a good person to love”: the image of the addressee in Russian plus sizes clothes advertising

Abstract

The article considers the contemporary advertising of the language picture of a stout person, an addressee of a certain category of goods i. e. clothes of large sizes. The generalized image of the addressee (a typical representative of the target audience) is believed to be one of the most important components of advertising communication, which should be identifiable by the addressee while perceiving the advertisement. The defining marker of the target audience (body thickness) chosen for the analysis of the goods category refers to the sensitive sphere and therefore is in the zone of a communicative risk and demands increased commercial tolerance. The analysis is based on a wide sample of different promotional messages that fall under the goods category «clothes of a large-size” (advertising texts of large-size clothing online stores, advertising posters etc.). The most frequent characteristics of a representative of the target audience are identified in the relevant advertising messages (in particular gender, age, psychographic and other parameters), as well as the repertoire of the language tools and communication strategies used for this purpose. As a result, the author comes to the conclusion that the specificity of the language of the studied product category is largely formed by the expected needs of the addressee, the need to correct his picture of the world and psychological state.