Subjectivity And Intersubjectivity In English Advertising Discourses

There are two main ideological streams in the search for the nature of human language and its universals, one is Formalism and the other is Functionalism. The former approaches language from its inside with analyzing language structure as its focus while the latter tries to explain language facts from its outside, focusing on the motivation of language use from functional aspects. Cognitive linguistics, as a new paradigm of language research, contributes something new to Functionalism. This new paradigm stresses the importance of conceptualization, believing meaning results from the combination of certain conceptual content and some specific way of construing that content. As it is construal, it definitely involves something like perspective, epistemic state and affect of the conceptualizer. Language, we think, is the sign export of that certain content under the influence of these subjective factors.The present research selects advertising, a special language style, as its object of study and explores its conceptualization based on analysis of real English commercial advertising discourses taken from the corpus set up by the author. To understand the subjective factors involved in advertisers’ conceptualization of products and consumers, we constructed a construal configuration of advertising based on Verhagen’s construal configuration in2005/2007and define subjectivity in advertising discourses as the advertiser’s imprint of his or her perspective, epistemic state as well as affect when encoding in language his or her conceptualization of the product being advertised and define intersubjectivity in advertising discourses as the advertiser’s imprint of his or her cognitive coordination with consumers bearing in mind the existence of this another conceptualzer when construing the product. In general, we want to find answers to the following two questions:Firstly, to achieve the goal of persuasion how the advertiser’s construal of the product reflects his or her subjectivity?Secondly, to achieve the goal of persuasion how the advertising discourses reflects the cognitive coordination between the advertiser and the consumer?The concepts "subjectivity" and "intersubjectivity", wchich originate from the field of philosophy and enter into linguisitic field with the revival of Humanism in linguistic study, undergo developments in different linguistic paradigms. In philosophical study, subjectivity highlights subject’s self-awareness and intersubjectivity highlights subject’s awareness of others and the relationship between self and others. Based on this understanding of the concepts and the relevant studies in linguistics, especially cognitive linguistics, the present study concerns itself not only with the self expression of the advertiser, mainly from the perspective of advertiser’s self awareness but also with the cognitive coordination between the advertiser and the consumer, manily from the perspective of advertiser’s awareness of others.Bearing the two research questions in mind and guided by the construal configuration we constructed, the study analyzes subjectivity in advertising discourses from three dimensions, namely, perspective, epistemic state and affect and analyzes intersubjectivity in advertising discourses from two dimensions, namely, the advertiser’s concern with the epistemic self of the consumer and the advertiser’s concern with the image self of the consumer.The major findings are as follows:First, on the use of personal pronouns, an advertiser can approach the product either from an insider perspective to convey to consumers the message that he or she is very familiar with the product or from an outsider perspective to convey to the consumer the message that the description of the product is very objective. Use of the pronoun "you" mitigates the opposite relationship between the advertiser and the consumer brought by the insider perspective. And arranging advertising discourses from an outsider perspective is a discourse strategy of the advertiser to convey to the consumer his or her intent by way of a third voice and at the same time make the advertising more acceptable. As to time perspective, displacement of tense and "non-time" use of time adverbials help the advertiser create a virtual stage on which he or she and the consumer meet "here and now" by way of language, which actually shortens the psychological distance between them two. Due to the different locations, it is difficult for the advertiser and the consumer "meet" spatially, that’s why space deixis is seldom used in advertising discourses.Second, in advertising discourses the advertiser usually attaches his or her epistemic stance to propositions concerning products’features and the services products can offer through the use of modals including verbs and adverbs, the combination of these two and non-factive verb constructions. Different epistemic modals qualify the propositions differently which help the advertiser achieve the goal of making different commitments to the truth of the propositions. While dynamic modals by adding modal force to the propositions help the advertiser convey successfully to the consumer the message that he or she is quite willing and ready to provide excellent service.Third, positive adjectives are commonly used in advertising while adjectives describing physical features of products seldom appear. Because of their argumentative orientation, these positive adjectives actually provide arguments to certain conclusions expected by the advertiser and are manifestations of the advertiser’s positive affect. The meanings of gradable adjectives and their inflected forms common in advertising are very vague because they lack in specific references, the understanding of which must depend on the advertiser’s subjective construct. Besides, the cross-domain match of adjectives with products is also a way of the advertiser’s self expression, which can at the same time make the description more vivid.Fourth, intersubjectivity in advertising is the cognitive operation at the level of subject of conceptualization, namely between the advertiser and the consumer. One way manifesting this operation is that certain language forms including negative expressions, inter-clause connectives and questions are motivated by the advertiser’s providing guidance to the consumer as to the construal of products, which shows the advertiser’s concern with the epistemic self of the consumer. By using negation, the advertiser guides the consumer to reject one epistemic stance towards the product and accept another one. One such negative construction "no+NP" emphasizes the implicit comparison between the product advertised and other ones of the same kind."More than (just)" construction guides the consumer to abandon the generic description about products and accepts the more appropriate and accurate one believed by the advertiser. Although it is common practice that advertisers use words stingily due to spatial and economic pressures, they use connectives to help consumers conceptualize the relationship between clauses the way they expect. We mainly analyzed "that’s why" and "finally" since they are the frequently occurred ones in our corpus. As is known to us all, people ask questions when they don’t know or are not sure about something. However, questions commonly used by advertisers in headlines are ways of regulating consumers’ cognitive state. These questions actually inform consumers of the product being advertised either by providing generic information or by leading consumers’ construal to a certain aspect thus foretelling the theme of the body part.Fifth, another way manifesting the cognitive operation at the level of subject of conceptualization, namely intersubjectivity in advertising discourses, is that certain language forms including face heightening construction "you deserve" and indirect proposal of purchase are motivated by the advertiser’s regulating of the consumer’s psychology, which helps the construal develop in the direction advantageous to the advertiser. This cognitive coordination between the advertiser and the consumer shows the advertiser’s concern with the image self of the consumer."You deserve" construction and the like maintains the positive face needs of the consumer by satisfying his or her want of being appreciated, granted and approved, which is usually a quite happy psychological experience for the consumer. The indirect proposal of purchase, including exhortative and invitational, is the advertiser’s concern with the image self of the consumer in the sense of being polite and treating the consumer as an equal participant of the communication.In conclusion, based on the stuides of other scholars, the present research makes an active attempt to extend the study of subjectivity to discourse level. Taking into consideration of factors like the goal of communication, partners as well as spatial and temporal features of the communication, study of subjectivity in discourse is thought to be a dynamic and full-dimensional research into the topic. Besides, the construal configuration we constructed put advertisers, products and consumers at one and the same plane, which allows a relatively systematic cognitive interpretation to some seemingly irrelevant language phenomena. Subjectivity and intersubjectivity are very complex cognitive phenomena which involve many disciplines, such as philosophy, psychology, sociology, linguistics and so on. This dissertation is mainly linguistically oriented based on relevant studies, and efforts should be made cross disciplinarily in the future.