Relevance In English Commercial Advertising Copy

The publication of Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson's collaboration Relevance: Communication and Cognition in 1986 offers us a new perspective to study language communication. Since then, a great number of linguists and researchers have shown their enthusiasm for the development and application of Relevance Theory. So far it has been applied to the explanation of some linguistic phenomena such as language teaching and the translation of literary works. Likewise, adopting the Relevance Theory, this thesis attempts to analyze advertising copy.As advertising is a very common social phenomenon, it naturally attracts some linguists' and scholars' attention and many researches have been carried out from different angles. Currently, in respect of the advertising strategy and language, some scholars have done some pioneering work from the semiotic, sociological and psychological perspectives. In the thesis, I simply attempt to analyze the advertising copy within the framework of Relevance Theory and make some assumptions on advertising copy design.To begin with, the thesis revolves around advertising. It defines advertising and classifies it into various types from different points of view, and narrows its description down to English commercial advertising. Secondly, it tries to construe advertising copy from the traditional pragmatic perspective. Then, according to Relevance Theory, relevance in advertising copy is illustrated. In light of Relevance Theory, advertising is one-way and non-personal communication; it has some target or unidentified audiences to persuade. Whether the advertising copy may create an optimally relevant input to the target audiences is crucial to the marketing of a product or service. Finally some hypotheses on optimally relevant advertising copy are made.Certainly, the study of advertising copy can make a great deal of difference to the economic growth of the related enterprises. More important, it can have some implications for the cultivation of social concepts and people's daily language use.