Abstract:
Based on a corpus of print advertisements for cosmetics targeted at women, my
research focuses on the use of numerals as rhetorical devices in the discourse of advertising. As
this paper will show, numer als are employed recurrently in ads, under several linguistic forms, not
so much to indicate precision, but to catch the attention, to enhance the credibi lity of the advertising
message and/or to mak e the message more emotionally loaded, in order to persua de women to
buy the advertised products.
