The role of salience in newspaper advertisments with a view to their development as a genre

The paper presents an analysis of newspaper advertisements in the Slovene newspapers Edinost (1876-1928) and Slovenski narod (1866-1945) in order to investigate the role of salience in these adverts. The analysis is discussed within the grammar of visual design (Kress & van Leeuwen 2005 [1996]), the theory of culturally popular patterns of text organisation (Hoez 2001), as well as pragmatics and discourse analysis (Kunst Gnamuš 1984, Bešter 1992, Kranjc 1998, Schiffrin 1996 [1987], Verschueren 2000, Cook 2001). It is a detail of a study (Starc 2007) that aims to determine the constants in the development of the adverts\u27 structure, the use of semiotic codes and their functions in the discourse of advertisements through time. The data of the study show two constants: the changing layout of adverts and the organisation of the text, which follow either the Problem-Solution or the Desire Arousal- Fulfilment pattern of the text. In the older adverts, salience is achieved by typography, empty space, pictorial and cohesive sources. It is also concluded that salience has a significant role in the development of adverts as a genrenot only does it help to attract readers\u27 attention, it also construes meaning and affects text structure