"100% natural herbs and botanicals"
"This product not tested on animals"
Slogans, jingles, ads. We are bombarded daily with thousands of advertising messages, anywhere from 1,600-3,000 of them. Many of them are verbal messages, such as those listed above. Many more are visual messages: the beautiful model smoking a cigarette, the muscle-bound man using a particular razor, and so forth. Most ads are a combination of both a visual and a verbal message. So why do linguists care about advertising? Because advertising has developed over time to use language in a most creative, and some argue, unethical way.
Consider the first statement of this article: "100% natural herbs and botanicals." This is making a statement about the ingredients of a well-known shampoo. What is it saying the ingredients are? 100% herbs and botanicals (whatever those are), right? Actually, it is an ambiguous statement, as in:
Meaning 1: 100% of the ingredients are herbs and botanicals, and they happen as well to be natural; 100% modifies herbs and botanicals.
Meaning 2: Of the ingredients that are herbs and botanicals, those ingredients are 100% natural; 100% modifies only natural.
So which is it? Consult the back of your bottle--it's #2. Of the ingredients, the herbs and botanicals are natural. The herbs and botanicals might make up 5%, 20%, 40%, of the ingredients. We don't know. Is this misleading? Did the company lie? No, not officially. The most common interpretation is simply not the right one.
It is this difference between what is actually entailed (promised to be true) and what is implied (suggested to be true) that interests linguists, as well as consumers and industry regulators. For advertisers are regulated only in what they entail, by the 1933 Wheeler Amendment to the Federal Trade Commission. So for instance, I can't take a sugar cube and say, "This sugar cube will stop hair loss" because that statement entails (promises) that the sugar cube will indeed stop hair loss (and unless it's some new potent sugar cube, I think we can all agree that it won't). I can however show a "before" picture of a bald guy without a sugar cube next to an "after" picture of the same guy sporting luscious locks with a sugar cube and imply (let you infer) that the sugar cube has been responsible for the transformation.
Take the second statement above, "This product not tested on animals." What does this entail? What does it imply? While this is a popular phrase found on many products, I have done some research on the particular product I pulled this from. It turns out that each individual ingredient of this product has been tested on animals, they just haven't all been tested together in this particular product form. So look at the back of your shampoo bottle again and imagine each of those ingredients being tested on animals, just the actual shampoo itself has not been. Is there a big difference? Regardless of whether you want your products to be tested on animals so you know that they are safe for you and your family, or if you specifically buy products that have not been tested, the above statement should trouble you. How is it not deceptive? Consider its entailment and implication:
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