Think about TV ads. Analyze. Ask questions.

 

 

Consider these ideas for your own compositions.
TV Set   Computer and Quill Pen
WHAT INTENSIFIERS ARE USED?
WHAT INTENSIFIERS DO YOU USE?

Advertising is well known for its use of intensifiers: superlatives ("greatest, best, most, beautiful, fastest, lowest prices"), comparatives ("better than, more advanced, improved, increased, fewer calories), hyperboles and exaggerations, and many other ways to hype and to heap praise upon the product being sold.

In one sense, advertisers are little different from other wordsmiths, including poets and lovers, who use such "glittering generalities" to praise the object of their affection, for one motive or another.

But, in contrast to most poets and lovers, advertisers today often have to defend their claims or face legal problems.

Puffery is the term most often used in legal cases to describe most of the intensifiers in ads. A rather technical definition of puffery would include the use of words "which praise the item to be sold with subjective opinions, superlatives, or exaggerations, vaguely or generally, stating no specific facts."

Puffery is legal because courts have ruled that reasonable and prudent people are able to discount such "seller's talk."

Thus, an ad may not make a false specific claim (for example, about the measurable quantity of an item), yet may express almost any general subjective opinion.

In ads, as you note the intensifiers, distinguish between any specific claims and the more general puffery.

(Ivan Preston, in The Great American Blow-Up, while noting that puffery is legal, argues that these legal definitions need to be refined in order to reduce falsity.)

In any persuasion situation, it's a good rule to expect everyone to intensify their own "good" and downplay their own "bad."

 

In speech, some people use intensifiers habitually without realizing it.

Vulgarities, for example, are commonly used as all-purpose intensifiers to express feeling or emphasis, unrelated to their meaning. If we simply transcribed speech to writing, these vulgarities would be very noticeable (the F word, the S word, etc.).

"Sweet" intensifiers are also common in speech. Gift shop clerks have been known to go berserk when triggered by someone saying, for the millionth time, "Isn't that cute... nice... sweet...."

However, we'd probably not notice the more commonplace intensifiers of conversational speech, including words such as: "very, really, pretty, lots of, for sure." In writing, such intensifiers can usually be deleted or made more precise.

Writing texts once used the sexist term "schoolgirl style" as a label for informal writing (as in a letter or a diary) which was characterized by gushy sentimentality or undue intensity, including frequent use of "quotation" marks, underlining, italics, FULL CAPS, emphatic punctuation !!!

Constant use of intensifiers and absolutes may indicate the writer's absolutist mentality, or an attempt to persuade simply by strong assertions.

In formal logic, the fallacy of circular reasoning called "begging the question" (petitio principio) occurs when someone simply asserts to be true the very thing which needs to be proven.

Words such as "obviously" are sometimes used carelessly ("begging the question") because they try to pass over the issues that need to be discussed.

Check your own writing habits (Use your Find command) for these intensifiers:
absolutely, basically, certainly, definitely, fundamentally, incredibly, obviously, of course, perfectly, positively, really, simply, surely, very.

 
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