Relevance Theory And Its Application To Advertising Interpretation

Based on D. Sperber and D. Wilson's Relevance Theory, this thesis analyzes the interpretation of advertising, a form of communication. According to Relevance Theory, communication is an ostensive-inferential process, and context, the key factor in communication, is not fixed, but undergoes a dynamic change. And every act of commumcation is a process of searching optimal relevance. In the process of advertising communication, the advertiser employs many strategies that function as the ostensive stimuli that on the one hand, catch the audience's attention, and on the other hand, guide the audience to proceed towards optimal relevance. While the audience's task is to acquire optimal relevance through the stimuli and contextual assumptions. So as an advertiser, he does not only make the audience pay processing effort but also guarantees them certain contextual effects, or the ad will fail to arrive at its propagating and promoting goals. On the basis of Relevance Theory, this thesis accounts for the ostensive-inferential process of advertising, moreover, some newly launched concepts: ostension, manifestoes, etc. shed light on the interpretation of advertising, which offer a new angle of advertising interpretation.