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In slogans used in public information, politics, and advertising, and also in titles of books, documentaries, or articles, ambiguity is often employed to pique the interest of the reader in the message that is conveyed. According to several theories of text processing, this deliberate ambiguity may gain greater appreciation than slogans employing other rhetorical means. A special form of deliberate ambiguity is studied in this contribution: slogans that may be taken literally. The notion of salient meaning explains what happens when idiomatic meaning is reinterpreted into literal meaning, to fit the context. Instead of the esthetic experience often attributed to metaphorical expressions, this kind of ambiguity evokes humor. An experiment shows that deliberate ambiguity in slogans has a positive effect on appreciation. Recognition of the ambiguity is a strong factor in the appreciation of these slogans. Even nonambiguous slogans are appreciated more if they are recognized as ambiguous. Luuk Lagerwerf Deliberate ambiguity in slogansRecognition and appreciation Document Design 3(3), 245-260

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We carried out two studies in which several genre conventions were tested on professional readers to verify the usefulness of applying genre conventions to business proposals. In the first study, 39 male business clients of the company IBM Netherlands compared an authentic business proposal with a modified version that conformed to genre conventions of document structure. Readers' preferences and reading behavior were noted and observed. In the second study, the same group of IBM business clients compared fragments of proposals that differed in stylistic genre conventions. Readers' preferences were noted and verified. Results of the first study indicated that applying genre conventions to document structure improved the readers' selection of information. Results of the second study revealed that readers disapproved of persuasive style shifts, while opinions differed with respect to shifts from impersonal to personal style. rofessional readers have certain expectations of the documents they read. These expectations are based on genre conventions. Such con--L ventions evolve within a discourse community (Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1995). Some conventions are explicitly formulated, but other properties of the text are more implicitly conveyed by cultural norms of