Effectiveness of linguistic features for attracting audience:  A study of coworking space websites’ headlines

Maulidina Marlita   Firdausi; Nurenzia Yannuar; Yazid Basthomi

doi:10.21070/jees.v7i1.1647

(1) * Maulidina Marlita Firdausi Department of English, Faculty of Letters, Universitas Negeri Malang
Indonesia
(2) Nurenzia Yannuar Department of English, Faculty of Letters, Universitas Negeri Malang
Indonesia
(3) Yazid Basthomi Department of English, Faculty of Letters, Universitas Negeri Malang
Indonesia
(*) Corresponding Author

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21070/jees.v7i1.1647

Abstract

The emergence of coworking spaces have disrupted conventional working lifestyle and built a new trend: shared office space which highlights community-based services. Our paper looks at how this new business promotes their service through advertising language in online media. Advertising language in previous studies have mainly focused on slogans found in printed advertisements (Pratiwi et al., 2019; Dubovičienė & Skorupa, 2014; Niken et al., 2013; Suryasa, 2016), but we focus on headlines in internet advertisements, particularly websites. The headlines were analyzed using linguistic feature theories in four levels: phonological, lexical, syntactic, and semantic levels. The analysis discusses the linguistic features used in the coworking spaces’ home page, the use of the linguistic features in the content, and the effectiveness in attracting readers. Data collected for the study include 59 websites from a coworking space reservation platform, Coworker, and interviews with people involved in the industry. Results of the study show that headlines in coworking space websites prominently use alliteration, noun phrases, and hyperbole. Unlike headlines of printed media, digital media has to comply with search engine optimization (SEO) guidelines so that search engines will index the website properly.

HIGHLIGHTS:

Linguistic features used in website headlines have several elements in common with headlines in different ad channels, like TVs and printed ads.
The main difference between headlines in a digital and printed advertisement is the use of search engine optimization (SEO) strategies in online channels.
People’s educational and professional backgrounds can influence how they interpret headlines on websites.

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Author Biographies

Maulidina Marlita Firdausi, Department of English, Faculty of Letters, Universitas Negeri Malang

Maulidina Marlita Firdausi graduated from the English Department of Universitas Negeri Malang. She has been interested in websites, blogging, and content writing since high school. She currently works as a digital content writer for a hosting company headquartered in Lithuania. In her free time, Maulidina loves editing videos and going on adventures.

Nurenzia Yannuar, Department of English, Faculty of Letters, Universitas Negeri Malang

Nurenzia Yannuar received her Doctoral degree from Leiden University Centre for Linguistics. She is currently an Assistant Professor at the English Department of Universitas Negeri Malang. She has published research articles on the topics of sociolinguistics, World Englishes, linguistic landscapes, and youth languages.

Yazid Basthomi, Department of English, Faculty of Letters, Universitas Negeri Malang

Yazid Basthomi is Professor of Applied Linguistics with the Department of English, Faculty of Letters, Universitas Negeri Malang. Currently, he is the convener of the graduate program (MA and PhD) in ELT. He received his Master's from Curtin University and Doctorate from Universitas Negeri Malang, Indonesia. His research interests include genre analysis and interlanguage education. He has also been Coordinator of the Publication Division of the Association for the Teaching of English as a Foreign Language in Indonesia (TEFLIN).

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