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Language is a powerful tool to convey a message while provoking other aspects of a person’s perception. As language use can affect the mental imageries, feelings, memories, emotions, and other perceptions among many things, the shift of language is intentionally used in marketing and is strategized to elicit the desired impact on customers. Despite the impactful effects shifting language brings, previous studies rarely observe the elements of ad languages being shifted and the motivations to shift the language. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the language shifts within ad texts and the reasons for shifting the language in advertisement texts. The research questions of this study are “What information in the advertisements are being highlighted through language shifts?” and “What are the functions of the language shifts in the ads?” This study will use syntactic analysis to reveal the language shifts, the elements of sentences being shifted, and the functions of those shifts. The implications of this study are as a reference for future advertising in strategizing the language use within an ad and in evaluating the function of the language shift to achieve the desired impact.

advertisement; language shift; language shift function