A Cognitive-pragmatic Study Of Parody In Advertisements

Parody, as a rhetorical device, is extensively used in various types of verbalcommunication owing to its unique cognitive-pragmatic effects, especially inadvertisement, because it can result in novel expressive effects when combined withthe target audiences’ background knowledge, and thus attract their particular attention.Parody is not only a rhetorical device, but also a dynamic process of cognition andmode of thinking. A great sum of domestic and foreign researches have devoted theirefforts to the study of parody and resulted in considerable products. However, most ofthe researches have just made a generalization about the linguistic forms, features andfunctions of such a phenomenon while few of them have made an in-depth explorationto it from cognitive and pragmatic perspectives.This thesis presents a tentative study of advertising parody based on ConceptualBlending Theory and Adaptation Theory respectively from the perspectives ofcognitive linguistics and pragmatics. Fauconnier, the originator of ConceptualBlending Theory, considers that the network of conceptual integration includes fourmental spaces: input pace1, input space2, generic space and blended space. Theconcepts in the four spaces are connected with one another through cross-spacemappings. First, the elements and properties of one input space are mapped over toanother input space. Then, these elements and properties are selectively and partiallyprojected to the blended space through the three processes of composition, completionand elaboration, which result in the emergent structure and new meaning. Thiscognitive research on the advertising parody based on Conceptual Blending Theoryhas found out that cross-space mappings are the intrinsic apparatus for the phonetic,lexical, syntactic and semantic parodies in advertising language and that the emergentstructure as the result of conceptual integration in the simplex network, mirror network,single-scope network and double-scope network is the basic reason for the attraction ofthe advertising parody to the addressees. Besides, this thesis also makes a pragmatic exploration to various types ofadvertising parody from the perspective of Adaptation Theory. According toVerschueren, the originator of Adaptation Theory, language use is a process oflinguistic choice making, consciously or unconsciously, and linguistics choice hasthree properties such as variability, negotiability and adaptability. The presentpragmatic research finds out that the choice of advertising language also has such threeproperties, among which, variability and negotiability endow advertising languagewith ample space for choice and flexibility while adaptability orientates the choice ofadvertising language towards the target addressees. The generation of advertisingparody is the result of contextual adaptation. Whether the advertising language canattract the target addressees or not largely depends on its adaptability to all sorts ofsubjective and objective factors, and the actual linguistic and strategic choices of theadvertising parody are the result of the dynamic adaptation to the mental, social andphysical contexts of the target addressees.The combination of Conceptual Blending Theory and Adaptation Theory providesa new multi-dimensional perspective to interpret the apparatus for the construction andcomprehension of advertising parody, and in return, it is an efficacious test to thepracticability and interpretability of the two theories themselves. This thesis has notonly broadened the theoretical perspectives of the studies on advertising parody, butalso provided an effective way for people to create and understand advertising parody.