A Pragmatic Study Of Advertisement From The Perspective Of Semiotics

With the ongoing rapid development of modern society, advertisement is playing an increasingly vital part in every field of human being’s lives and it has deeply rooted in both psychological and cognitive levels of humans. Besides providing the consumers with timely and latest information of products on sale and for sale, it offers access to enriching their lives and molding their spirituality. Advertisement, especially the TV advertisement, is the most efficient publicity form which incorporates various signs as a whole such as celebrity signs, musical signs and linguistic signs and so forth, making itself the most typical and common publicity means that is able to fully reflect the pragmatic effects of signs.Aiming at different levels of groups of audiences, different pragmatic approaches have been applied to achieve the publicity effect expected by the advertisers. A successful advertisement is like a delicate work of art, from any angle of which you can appreciate its delicacy and elegance, in addition, it is highlighted that a well-designed advertisement is potentially capable of spreading the information all-around within the concordant cognitive ranges. A successful advertisement intentionally makes the real purposes and demands of the advertisers ambiguous, instead it attaches great importance to catering to the needs of the audiences from the psychological perspective and to form a correspondent cognitive dimension applying specially designed signs to arouse the deep emotional and cognitive resonance of the audiences to lead and induce them to buy and propagate the products unconsciously. Meanwhile, the audiences(the author gives a new but exact definition “advertisee”) anticipate gaining a sense of fulfillment by possessing certain products which are considered as symbols of status, wealth and beauty, which illustrates that what has been expected to be owned by the consumers includes not only the product itself but also the invisible spiritual products.In this thesis, based on Morrisean Pragmatic Principles, the author has chosen the Lanc?me perfume advertisement as the research object and deeply explored how the advertiser and advertisee reach a consensus on the information implied by signs in certain advertisements from the angle of psychological and cognitive levels. According to what has been presented in the research, the author firmly holds the grounds as follows: 1) The success of semiosis is determined by the meaning interpretation of the signs and influenced by the interpretant itself and the common cognitive context shared by the advertiser and the audience; 2) To make the advertisement achieve the maximal pragmatic effect, it’s crucially important for the advertisee to share a concordant cognitive context with the advertiser and it’s imperative for the advertiser to make a thorough study on both material and spiritual demands of his target audience; 3) What should be aware of is that the forms of signs can be chosen and adjusted creatively and flexibly based on the cognitive system but beyond the comprehension of the audiences. By analyzing the pragmatic features and approaches of the signs in Lanc?me perfume advertisement, the author looks forward to helping abridge the cognitive and psychological gaps between the advertiser and advertisee to avoid the contraction of standpoint so as to cater to the needs of both sides and achieve the optimal pragmatic effect.