Pragmatic Failures In English Advertisements For Chinese Products: An Adaptation Approach

Advertising,an element of marketing function,aims at promoting corporate image and brand notability so as to increase market effects.Advertising moves consumers from being unaware.of a product or service to finally purchasing it. Consumers are often persuaded to purchase some goods or services by the advertisements,for the advertising 4anguage makes the products advertised eye-catching and trustworthy.The power of advertising is,therefore,obvious.Hence many an enterprise designs English advertisements for t-heir products,for the purpose of promoting sales and exploiting foreign market as a whole.However,the expected effects of some advertisements have not been achieved due to different languagesand cultures.Thus pragmatic failures arise in many cases which have laid various obstacles for the promotion of products and expansion of market.This thesis aims to improve the quality and effect of English advertisements for Chinese products by means of exploring the root causes of pragmatic failures with the borrowed and modified framework of Adaptation Theory proposed by Verschueren (2000).After the analysis of causes,the focus is shifted to the strategies to reduce or avoid tile pragmatic failures.Some tentative strategies are recommended from the perspective of advertising language itself.Advertising English is categorized as part of Business English,therefore,the research of Advertising English would provide enlightenment to Business English.Based on the analysis,the author discovers that cultural difference is an important factor which causes pragmatic failure.The thesis, hereby,sets forth the enlightenment of culture element to Business English teaching, including how to cultivate students' business cultural awareness and to improve students' business pragmatic competence.In a whole,this analysis would contribute to Business English teaching,and the theoretical foundation of Business English study can be enhanced through adopting Adaptation Theory as an analytical tool.