Ambiguity as a means of language manipulation and meaning extension in politics, advertising and poetry

Abstract

The article investigates semantic innovations in political, advertising and (avant-garde) poetic discourses. The comparison of discourses is based on dominant communicative goals, language functions, and semantic parameters. The research focuses on the pragmatic and semantic features of ambiguity and vagueness in poetic, advertising, and political texts. It is concluded that poetic discourse is aimed at the simultaneous realization of the maximum number of word meanings in order to achieve the semantic extension of expression. Advertising and political discourses use ambiguity and vagueness as tools of linguistic manipulation for attracting the receiver’s attention.