A Stylistic Analysis of Language Use in Mtn And Glo Facebook Advertisements: A Systemic Functional Linguistics Approach

Abstract

— This study examines the stylistic features and linguistic choices employed in selected MTN and Glo advertisements on Facebook, with particular attention to how language and visual resources are deployed to communicate and persuade target audiences. The study adopts a qualitative descriptive research design and is anchored on M. A. K. Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), specifically the ideational, interpersonal, and textual metafunctions. Data comprise two purposively selected Facebook advertisements, one from MTN promoting a Ssocial media data bundle and one from Glo promoting bulk data for retailers. The advertisements were subjected to close textual and visual analysis, focusing on lexical choices, grammatical structures, imperatives, slogans, direct address, imagery, typography, colour, and layout. Findings reveal that both advertisements make deliberate use of linguistic and visual resources to attract attention, communicate product benefits, establish relationships with audiences, and encourage consumer action. The MTN advertisement adopts an informal, youthful, and socially oriented style, while the Glo advertisement employs a professional, business-oriented, and transactional style. The study demonstrates that Halliday’s three metafunctions provide a productive framework for explaining how advertising language represents experience, constructs advertiser-audience relationships, and organises messages for clarity and persuasion. The study concludes that the effectiveness of GSM advertising lies not only in the information conveyed but also in the strategic integration of linguistic and visual choices, and recommends that advertisers prioritise audience-oriented language, multimodal coherence, and the application of SFL in advertising research and pedagogy.