Adverts: the visual and verbal small print (lesson 2).

Dear LPG, 

I have another comment on the television adverts that we so often see and that I think we need to be aware of. I call this one the conditional rule.  

We people who are now pensioners spent a lot of time in their English Language classes learning about tense.  Do you remember reciting…  ‘I am - You are - He is - She is – We are – You are – They are’ etc.    I remember learning about the present tense, the past tense, the future tense and the conditional tense.

Have you noticed just how often the conditional tense is used in adverts?   It gets slipped in there and runs off the tongues of the narrators so smoothly that we don’t even notice that the advertiser is not actually promising very much at all.

I have found two examples for you.  I have left a link to one such television advert and ask you to note the very conditional line which sounds as if it promises so much until you listen properly…

What does… ’Should the worst happen, a cash sum could pay towards your mortgage or child care costs’, really mean.

The word, ‘could’ in the middle there sounds good but what are the conditions of that promise?  If the word used was ‘will’, there would be a definite promise there and I know that most of the readers of this site will not be worried about child care.

Please don’t think that I am saying anything is wrong with Legal and General’s product.  This is just the advert that caught my attention when I was looking for an example, but whenever we hear the words ‘should’, ‘could’, ‘may’, ‘might’ and ‘would’, before breathing a sigh of relief; we need to know exactly what the conditions are.

This is a lesson that the English grammar classes of the early and mid-20^th century prepared us elders for, and so we may be more qualified than most to pass the message on to our younger family members. The bottom line is that when they hear or see a word used in its conditional form during any advert (television, magazine, electronic or otherwise), they need to make sure they have learned everything they need to know about the conditions before letting such an advert leave that warm fuzzy feeling of absolute security with them. 

TF, Lee

TF has left us a link to the advertisement used as an example and wonders how many times you will need to see it before realising the conditional aspects talked about above. 

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