Abstract
This thesis posits that advertising texts contain cultural messages. It identifies and analyzes the linguistic and paralinguistic contents of advertisements. The study highlights the various functions of advertising visuals and argues that visuals encode cultural and verbal messages. It is important for the translator to know how to disambiguate visuals and "read" them. A major part of the thesis is concerned with semantic interplays. Puns, idioms and metaphors are analyzed and an attempt is made at working out their respective typologies. This shows that lexical items encode cultural messages. This provides a means to work out possible translation strategies for translating figurative language. The relationship between visuals and semantic interplay is also highlighted. Gender issues are also explored linguistically and paralinguistically. It is shown that gendered values are prominent in English lexical items. The implications to English into Malay translation of gender related issues are identified.