Privat- und Werbeanzeigen in der „Krakauer Zeitung“ (1857–1866)

The article addresses the issue of advertisements in old newspaper texts. Specifically examined are classified private and promotional adverts from a German-language Cracow newspaper “Krakauer Zeitung”, published between 1857 and 1866. To date, few analyses of such texts have been carried out. Jörg Meier (2011) examined old German-language advertising texts published in German-language press of Central Europe, particularly in the Habsburg Monarchy. However, in his research he did not include Galicia. In his research, he considered both extra-textual (language-independent) and intra-textual (linguistic) factors. This article draws on and attempts to continue that research. The analysis takes into account the approach developed by Silvia Bendel (1998) used in the study of older advertising texts. In particular, it is concerned with text actions used in these texts, such as naming a particular product, indicating its price, giving the place of sale, etc. The text function model developed by Brinker (2001) was also taken into account. In addition, Janich’s (2013) model designed to study contemporary advertising texts was applied. The aim of this paper is to establish the features of the textual genre of “advertisement” in the analyzed texts from “Krakauer Zeitung” on the basis of the above-mentioned literature on the subject. It is specifically concerned with intra-textual factors. The study considers aspects such as textual actions, typographic elements, means of persuasion and argumentation. The study includes 20 texts which form a representative corpus. Almost all of the examined texts have a basic appellative function; however, in some of them an informative function was found. Almost all texts contain means of persuasion and argumentation that determine the appellative function. However, this function is not expressed exclusively in a linguistic way. Typographical means such as font type and size play an important role. In the analyzed texts, traces or individual instances of graphic/image elements, which complement or extend the advertising message contained in them, are used.