A Study On Cultural Rhetoric Of Advertising

Due to the economic globalization, advertising, as an important means of product promotion, has got more and more attention. Advertising language, as a carrier of the information of products, not only depends on language to transmit physical information, but also to carry out cultural exchange. Many scholars have done related researches on advertising from a variety of perspectives, such as the perspective of linguistics, semantics, pragmatics, rhetoric, semiotics and so forth. However, few have studied advertising language from the cultural rhetoric perspective. In view of this, this thesis will attempt to make such an analysis to reveal the rhetorical operation of culture in advertising.The research will not only make an empirical study on the advertising language practice, but also study it from the theoretical point to reveal the cultural connotation and its rhetorical operation mode on advertising language. Taking Chinese and English advertisements as research object, the present study first analyzes the features of advertising language from the linguistic level. It more emphasizes the application of two rhetorical devices, metaphor and pun, and their relationships with culture when analyzing the rhetorical features of advertising language. Based on the analysis, it can be seen that the rhetorical devices used in advertising can reflect a nation's unique cultural characteristics.On the theoretical level, the thesis attempts to apply Foucault's theory of rhetoric as epistemic to analyze the rhetorical operation of culture in advertising from three points: discursive practice, rules and roles. Every culture has its own social discursive formation. As one of the discursive practice, advertising language is inevitably affected by its social discursive formation. So the advertising creation must obey certain cultural rules and conform to the consumers'cultural background, through which the products can be recognized by consumers, thus realizing the aim of persuading and arousing people's purchasing desire.The conclusion of the present study is that, when analyzing advertising language, attention should not only be paid to the linguistic features of advertising language and the rhetorical devices used in advertisements, but also to the implied cultural connotations and their rhetorical operation.