Impoliteness and humour in roadside drug advertising in Lagos State, Nigeria

Abstract

This article explores the relevance of impoliteness and humour as advertising strategies among roadside hawkers of alternative medicine, and retailers of herbal aphrodisiacs. The study sets out to analyse the way humorous impolite utterances serve as advertising strategies employed by roadside hawkers of medicinal products with a view to attracting patronage. The study analyses eight purposively extracted excerpts from ten recordings of
participants in different parts of Lagos state. The excerpts were subjected to a pragmatic analysis using Culpepper’s (2011) impoliteness theory complemented by Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) conceptual metaphor theory. The marketing strategies presented in the study point up the efficacy of impolite utterances employed by the marketers, highlighting at the same time crucial discourse types to which the public is expected to orient: preventive, curative and proactive, all of which align with and are revelatory of the psychosocial fears and interests of the buyers of these products. The study also finds out that implicit reference to male virility and female appeal seems to be an uncanny fixation in the effort of these sellers to recommend home-made concoctions as alternative therapy to
orthodox medicine. The article concludes that humorous impolite utterances are veritable advertising strategies deployed by roadside drug sellers to gain positive outcomes and ultimately drive more sales.