A Pragmatic Analysis Of Persuasive Communication In Clothing Marketing

The thesis is an investigation into faee-to-face persuasive marketing communication which appeared with China's transformation from planned economy to market economy ,specifically focusing on persuasive communication in clothing marketing. By reviewing the related literature on persuasion in rhetoric, social psychology,纵横术(Zong Heng Shu) in ancient times of China,it has been found that none of these disciplines have studied persuasion fully. Jef Verschueren' s Linguistic Adaptation Theory , which was influenced by evolutionary epistemology,and attempted to explain linguistic structure by reference to non-linguistic pressures and causes, throws new light on persuasion.This study, through carefully scrutinizing the obtained data, by reference to the model proposed by Dr YU GuoDong, builds a framework of analysis on the basis of Linguistic Adaptation Theory. Using the framework, the present study classifies the persuasive utterances of shop assiatants and individual sellers as adaptatoion to physical world (including adaptation to stretches of time, adaptation of shopping environment, adaptation of physical appearance, adaptation to different sexes, and adaptation to different ages), adaptation to social conventions (including adaptation to the business tradition of being honest and reliable, adaptation of addressing, adaptation to some people's worshipping and having a blind faith in things foreign,and adaptation to the custom of figuresXadaptation to psychological motovations (including the need for pleasing to the eye, the need for fine quality, the motivation for low price, the desire for esteem,the motivation to follow the consumption of popularity, and the desire to be complimented ).