A Cognitive Analysis Of Parody In Advertisements

In recent years, the research on parodic advertisements (ads) has aroused greatinterest, however, most of those studies are from the perspective of rhetorics, aestheticsand pragmatics, and fewer studies focus the cognitive perspective. Therefore, this thesis,by theoretical analysis and case study, will apply the Figure-ground theory and theConceptual Blending Theory (CBT) to explore the cognitive mechanisms of parodicadvertisements, including its generative process and dynamic online meaningconstruction from the perspective of cognitive linguistics.First, with the application of Figure-ground Theory, the products’ information in thepaordic advertisements acts as the parodying Figure while the imitated object, i.e., theconventional expression serves as the parodying Ground. The generation process ofparodic advertisements is the process of imitating the parodied Ground and substitutingthe parodied Figure with products’ information which needs to be salient, during whichthere are at least three steps: planning, sentence generating and revising by the designersso as to highlight the products and launch the persuasive function of advertisements.Second, in the light of the Conceptual Blending Theory, the parodic ads as inputs canmotivate the audiences’ pre-existing knowledge and relevant cognitive domains, and theaudiences blend the products’ information in real time, and then the meaningconstruction is completed through composition, completion and elaboration. Whenexplaining the meaning construction process based on the conceptual integration networkof CBT, the author found that the process would be better presented if the Figure-groundtheory can be applied at the same time. Therefore, this thesis proposes a new integratednetwork by merging the Figure-ground theory into the original integration network ofCBT to illustrate the meaning construction process. Based on this new network, theauthor analyzes three types of parodic advertisements parodic ads on phoneticsimilarity, parodic ads on semantic similarity and parodic ads on structural similarityto present the meaning construction process. With further analysis, it is found that when the audiences notice a parodic advertisement the parodying expression, as the input,can motivate the relevant information of the parodied expression, and can highlight theparodying Figure (the product’s information) which replaces the parodied Figure. Theonline meaning construction process mainly depends on two input mental spaces, whoseinformation can be synthesized in the Blending Space by mapping and selectiveprojection, and then through composition, completion and elaboration with the relevantbackground information, the meanings and the intentions are constructed in the emergentstructure.Finally, this thesis concludes that the generative process of the parodic advertisement,which bridges the advertisers or products and the audiences, is in fact an encoding or thelanguage production process from the advertiser’s point of view, while the meaningconstruction is a decoding or comprehension process from the audience’s perspective. Onthe basis of the explanation of the generative process and the meaning construction ofparodic advertisements, the complete communication mode has been drawn, which tosome extent can broaden the insight for further research on parody and on the creation ofadvertisements..