Politeness Strategy And Its Pattern In Advertising Speech

From 1980s, there has been an enormous upsurge of interest in the linguistic and social study of advertising speech. It has been explored from linguistic approaches, semiotic approaches, and communication approaches. Within each approach, different parts of the total phenomena are focused. However, based on the previous studies of advertising speech, it is found that little work has been done on providing a detailed study for the politeness linguistic phenomenon employed in advertising speech. The current study is an attempt to this specific linguistic phenomenon from pragmatic and sociological point of view. In light of Brown & Levinson's politeness theory, classification and description of politeness strategy, interpretation as well as analysis of politeness strategy pattern will be given. Additionally, the politeness strategy pattern will be further analyzed from the perspective of classified products.In this thesis "advertising speech" is confined only to the speech in consumer advertising published in magazine. It is hypothesized that there is a politeness strategy pattern in advertisement in a certain culture. The hypothesis is approached both qualitatively and quantitatively. Brown & Levinson's politeness strategy theory is applied to classify and describe the advertising speech, aiming at finding the hypothesized pattern. Statistical data from magazine "Time " will be used as a case study to illustrate the politeness strategy pattern. The statistical results demonstrate that generally speaking positive politeness strategy is the most frequently used one in consumer advertising in U.S.A. culture (with relative frequency of 54.58). Negative politeness strategy and bald on record politeness strategy are less frequently used (with the relative frequency of 22 and 18.49 respectively). Off record and avoiding doing FTA (Face Threatening Act) are the two least frequently used ones (with the relative frequency of 4.05 and 0.88 respectively). Specifically speaking, the politeness strategy patterns for consumer goods advertising, consumer durables advertising and consumer services advertising, the three sub-categories of consumer advertising, differ from each other and have their own features.Furthermore, Brown & Levinson's another model, Wx model, is adopted to analyze why and how the patterns form in these ways. It is discussed that the general level of Wx in a culture; the extent of FTAs; the typical FTA; the mode of positive face distribution and the extent of consumer's face wants are all the reasons that influence the final politeness strategy patterns in ads. Through the exploring of cultural composition of Wx itself, the forming process of the strategy pattern is analyzed. And it is further discussed that the classified product promoted in consumer advertising is another reason that determines the politeness strategy patterns.The significance of present study on politeness strategy patterns in ads is that it gives some clues to the copy writing in advertising, like how to apply a proper politeness strategy in a certain advertisement,and provides a way to perceive a culture, that is, through the analysis of the politeness strategy pattern in ads in a culture related.Based on these statistical studies and theoretical analyses of the hypothesized pattern, some implications for further study will be given.