From empire to republic: a study of changes in advertorial prose, 1876-1928

Official URL: http://192.168.1.20/record=b1304413 (Table of Contents)

This study examines the texts of Late Ottoman and Early Republican advertisements to understand how these texts, as forms of social discourse, reflect the mainstream ideologies. This study exploits this opportunity to closely examine Turkish society through the lens of a particular time frame: starting with the first appearance of local advertisements in Ottoman lands by the end of the 19th century until the reform of conversion to Latin script in Turkish Republic in 1928. Therefore it only deals with the texts in old script. The advertisements published in the late Ottoman and early Republican periodicals provide the primary material for this research. The nature of language employed in the advertisements is of significant emphasis in this study. Advertisements are analyzed in order to reveal the common themes in their prose with respect to patriotism, nationalism, Islamism, technology and modernity, and Westernism. These themes and the prose change in the advertisements parallel to the discourse of available political authority and the events that society experiences during this time period. The rationale of such a focus is to have a better understanding of the transition of Ottoman subjects into Turkish citizens since advertisements provide a mirror to the transformations in society as well as continuities.