Lutz Weasel Language Analysis

William Lutz, an author specialised in the use of simple and comprehensible language and the avoidance of jargons. “With these words I can sell you anything” illustrate the idiom of marketing, how businesses use marketing strategies to attract consumers into purchasing their products. Lutz claims that companies use “weasel words” to confuse and deceive the public. Such words are described in different topics and each of them gives us quite a few examples of how advertisers use these confusing statements along with stories of how shoppers get fooled.
The first popular confusing word he talks about is “help”. According to Lutz, “help” only means to support. Buyers are always misled by this word as they immediately think it means to eradicate,
“Acts” and “works” are terms that bring life to a product and to the advertisement. Both of them are only open phrases as they don’t always tell about the exact performance of the product.
If a producer wants to lure consumers more, he will advertise his products with tag lines having the word “like”. Here “like” indicates something superior or more prominent. Lutz gave the example of how Winston achieved higher sales just by promoting his cigarettes using a striking tagline with the word “like”.
He also stated that the claim that advertisers use are usually incomplete words and to make the ad more effective they provide influential visual images along with it. Sometimes different “weasel words” are joint or altered to make a tagline. Nowadays advertisers are using technological and scientific way to promote their product. Lutz uses descriptive and convincing language throughout the whole article for consumers to be aware of the different marketing tricks. He concluded that the only way to avoid falling for these selling tricks is to have a good critical sense and judgmental talent. Purchasers must be aware of the real meaning of each and every word in an ad. They should be well-informed about slangs that companies use to mislead the