Contemporary observations on the attention value and selling power of English print advertisements (1700-1760)

One of the most distinctive features of the early eighteenth-century English press was the substantial increase in advertisements. This increase in advertising did not go unnoticed by the leading writers of the day. Addison, Steele, Fielding and Johnson all comment on advertising discourse and its typographical presentation. This contribution analyses these contemporaries’ views within a theoretical framework that Leech (1966) and Gotti (2005) propose in relation to the communicative features and language of advertising discourse. Two of these characteristics are Attention Value and Selling Power. The analysis of eighteenth-century advertising is supported by reference to contemporary advertisements in the Newcastle Courant.