Book excerpt: The research reported in this volume attempts to refine our understanding of persuasive messages of television advertising by studying the role of language in persuasion in two ways. First, it comprises an attempt to refine our understanding of how language might function in persuasion by examining relevant work from a variety of related disciplines, potentially germane either in terms of their theoretical approaches to the process or in terms of the actual linguistic techniques which they have suggested as enhancing the persuasive impact of a message. Second, a comparative study was undertaken in order to test the generalizability of the linguistic features found to characterize persuasive language in television advertising.