A Study Of English Print Advertising Communication From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Advertising is a special kind of communication. It's a one-way communication between the addresser (advertiser) and the addressee (audiences). In the field of linguistics, studies of advertising language mainly concentrate on semiotic analysis, stylistic analysis, discourse analysis and pragmatics analysis. The goal of advertising is to influence and persuade the public, using the primary tool of language. In advertising communication, how ad messages are communicated to the audiences and audiences interpret the advertiser's messages are especially of considerable practical concern.This thesis presents an analysis of English print advertising communication from the pragmatic perspective based on relevance theory proposed by Sperber and Wilson (1986, 1995). It covers over 30 advertisements extracted from four popular American magazines-People, Time, Newsweek and Forbes, published from April to December 2004. These ads serve as examples in the analysis of advertising communication.The principle of relevance holds that every act of ostensive communication communicates the presumption of its own optimal relevance. Two factors, contextual effects and processing effort, determine the degree of relevance. Based on relevance theory, this thesis summarizes that ad headlines can work as ostensive stimuli in advertising cominunication and relevance optimizers by being brief, containing enough new information, including names with advertising value and connecting ad texts to prior facts and assumptions, so as to add contextual effects or reduce processing effort to make them optimally relevant. Besides, this thesis analyzes advertisers' informative intention and communicative intention, overt and covert forms of communication and readers' inferences in advertising.The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One is a brief introduction of purpose, significance, research methodology, data collection and organization. Chapter Two reviews some approaches to advertising and puts forward relevance theory as the-oretical foundation of this thesis. Chapter Three aims at analyzing optimal relevance and discussing ad headlines as ostensive stimuli and relevance optimizers. Chapter Four discusses ostensive-inferential communication followed by an analysis of informative and communicative intentions of advertising communication which are crucial in distinguishing overt and covert forms of advertising communication. Three possible goals of applying covert communication are pointed out-to imply superiority, to offer special value and to touch upon some sensitive topics. The audiences' inferences in advertising are also discussed in this chapter. In Chapter Five, conclusions based on the previous research are drawn and some limitations and suggestions of this thesis are pointed out.This thesis is intended to investigate advertising communication with a view to gain a better understanding of how advertising messages are communicated and interpreted. It is sincerely hoped that this study might to some extent enrich and contribute to the research. It is also expected to provide help to copywriters in the design of ads and to ad readers in the appreciation and interpretation of print advertisements.Finally, it should be pointed out that this thesis is a tentative research in English print advertising communication. Due to some limitations, the study may not be comprehensive or thorough. Any remaining mistakes and weak points are open to criticism.