Investigation into Structural Subjects on a Drugstore Website
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Abstract
This study investigates the surfacing of sentence subjects in drug descriptions on a drugstore website. Despite the fact that the overt presence of sentence subjects are generally required in Standard English, covert subject sentences, namely the imperatives and the subjectless declaratives are widespread not only in spoken language, but also in instructions, product descriptions, and advertisements. The finding of this study shows that sentence structures in drug descriptions in Walgreens.com vary with the large majority as covert subject sentences. The structures are considered register-based variations meaning that they only occur in specific environment. This study delved into the reason behind the variations. It discovered that the variations are the result of economical process which facilitates the communicative purpose of the text and the US government restrictions for medical products.
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