An Analysis of Figurative Language and Implicature in Smartphone Advertisements on Instagram

Abstract

Advertisements commonly use various strategies to encourage their target audience to buy their products. Some of these strategies include using figurative language and maxim violation. Although several studies have investigated these in various advertisements, few have examined both variables, especially in Instagram captions of smartphone products. Hence, this study aims to fill this gap by further exploring the use figurative language and maxim violation in the Instagram captions of Samsung smartphones. A total of six captions are analyzed and randomly selected, one caption for each month from January to June 2026. The data is analyzed qualitatively. The findings revealed that metaphor and personification are most frequently used in the captions. The maxim of quality is also mostly violated. The general implicature from the analyzed captions is that Samsung would like to highlight the capabilities of the camera in their Galaxy smartphones. It was also found that there is a relation between the figurative language used and the maxims that are violated.