The Conceptual Integration Theory Of Puns In Advertising

Pun is one of the popular rhetoric employed in advertisements and it is also an important means to achieve advertising appeal. This thesis intends to provide a comprehensive and systemic analysis of pun in advertising within the framework of conceptual integration theory.This thesis attempts to answer these three questions as follows:1. How the pun in advertising is successfully communicated to readers and audiences?2. What are the cognitive mechanisms of generating the advertising pun?3. What are the cognitive conditions for interpreting the advertising pun? Based on the conceptual integration theory, the process of interpretation of advertising puns can be viewed as mappings among four mental spaces—input I₁, input I₂, generic space and the blend space. The double meanings of an advertising pun can activate two input spaces in audiences'mind—the input spaceI₁ and the input space I₂. There is a partial mapping of counterparts between the two input spaces, in other words, the counterparts of the double meanings map into each other. The generic space, which defines the mappings of the two input spaces, has the common or shared structures of the input spaces. Then the input spaceI₁ and the input spaceI₂ of an advertising pun are partially projected onto the blend space through the generic space and generate the emergent structure—the meaning of an advertisement. So in this way, the advertising pun can be communicated to readers and audiences.Through the illustration of the advertising pun in terms of the conceptual integration theory, we can also generate the following points:1. For the cognitive mechanism of the advertising pun, it includes the double contexts (double linguistic contexts and double non-linguistic contexts), conflicts of the double contexts (the conflict of double linguistic contexts and the non-linguistic contexts) and the similarity between the double contexts (the similarity of the double linguistic and non-linguistic contexts).2. For the cognitive conditions of interpreting the advertising pun, it involves the factors of cognitive model and cultural model. Put it specifically, people should have the same cognitive model and cultural model for the interpretation of the advertising pun.The analysis can not only help audiences understand the advertising pun, but also enables the advertiser to make a better application of puns in designing advertisements.