Parcellation as a Graphic Tool of Expressiveness in English Advertising Headlines

Parcellation is an effective means of actualizing the communicative perspective of an utterance and accentuating its rhematic dominant. The study is devoted to the research into the specifics of parcellation in advertising headlines from promotional brochures containing descriptions of automobile brands. The study material included 164 headlines comprising about 1000 words, which were selected with the help of the continuous sampling method and analyzed in terms of their semantics, syntax and means of expressiveness. As a result of the study, it was found that the advertising headlines are characterized by brevity, similarly to advertising slogans. Parcellation tends to the division of the headlines into two equal parts - 2:2 and 3:3 words in each; or more rarely, into three parts. The lexical composition of the parceled headlines is full of emotive lexis and words with the hyperbolized and emphatic meanings, which build the associative connections between technical features of automobiles and customer values. From the syntactic point of view, the headlines contain nominative constructions, which underline brand values; predicative constructions, which have some elements of narrativization, customization, direct persuasion, as well as some elements of emotional intelligence of brands; adjectival constructions, describing automobile features; and mixed constructions, combining various syntactic structures. Among the means of expressiveness, it is worth mentioning that contrast and syntactic parallelism are the most organically collocated techniques with the phenomenon of parcellation. Customization as a marketing approach, supplemented with the graphic tools of parcellation, focuses attention to the customer personality and their needs. Personalization as a stylistic technique provides brands with some elements of emotional intelligence; parcellation additionally accentuates the explication of anthropocentrism. In conclusion, parcellation in combination with linguistic and advertising methods contributes to achieving the persuasive effect in the promotional discourse, necessary for brand differentiation in a highly competitive environment of the automotive market.