Utilitarian and aesthetic values in the modern German society (through the example of print media advertisements)

The analysis of advertising print materials placed in German mass media allows revealing the hierarchy of values of modern society, its needs and sociocultural level. Advertisers actively appeal to the concept of "utilitarian values" of society, as they reflect propensity of a contemporary man, first of all, to comfort and moderate money spending. Advertisers' appeal to aesthetic values is determined, on the one hand, by good taste of a part of society, and on the other hand – by prestige of purchased goods or rendered commercial services. In German advertising media texts, the aesthetic value is emphasized, as a rule, when offering expensive goods, which cannot be bought by everybody. It was found out that in German advertising texts the evaluation vocabulary is actively used to effectively influence buyer's consciousness. The analysis of advertisement texts identified two types of goods, whose buyers pursue either utilitarian or aesthetic values. It was found that the more prestigious and expensive the goods, the oftener the evaluating words are used and the more emphasis is put on the aesthetic values of the German society. If the goods are cheap and less prestigious – lexical units that denote utilitarian values are used. © 2016 Zheltukhina et al.