On The Rhetorical Devices In Advertising From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Everyday people are exposed to a variety of advertisements—in newspapers and magazines, on radio, television and the internet. The popularity of advertisements in people's lives has made them an important part of everyday life. The aim of advertising is to attract the attention of the audience, and then interest them to produce the desire for purchasing. In the advertisement design, the advertiser pays much attention to the application of language techniques. Thus the rhetorical figures are adopted more and more frequently.Based on the Relevance Theory of Sperber and Wilson, this thesis has analyzed the application of some rhetorical figures, such as simile, metaphor, pun, parody and hyperbole in Chinese and English advertisements. According to Relevance Theory, as a special language communication, advertising belongs to the ostensive-inferential model which includes the ostensive stimulus of the advertiser and the inference effort of the audience. In the advertising communication, the advertiser should guarantee that the figures of speech used are optimal relevant stimuli which are worth the audience's attention and processing effort. According to the context and the discourse, the audience makes some efforts to produce some textual effects on understanding the intention of the advertiser. What's more, in the process of interpreting, the audience can get these pragmatic effects: 1)attractive 2)humorous 3) brief 4) aesthetic.However, not all of the advertisements with figures of speech are successful. Due to different cultures, social and individual factors, the advertising effects are different to some extent. Thus in order to make a good advertisement, the advertiser need better understand the features of society, culture and individual group.Although there are some limitations in this research, it is still of theoretical value and practical significant. It not only expends the explanatory of Relevance Theory, but also is helpful to make a better application of figures of speech in advertising for the advertiser, to understand the advertising correctly for the audience.