Research Into Advertising Language From The Perspective Of Pragmatics

Introduced in this dissertation is the research into advertising language from the perspective of pragmatics. Based on the relevant theories of pragmatics and the various characteristics of advertising language, this dissertation deals with contrastive study of language from the aspects of theory and language resources. As a newly emerged branch of linguistics, pragmatics has been developing into an upsurge in the past thirty years. At the same time, advertising language is becoming increasingly important and indispensable in China since its reform and opening-up, especially after its entry into WTO. With the rapid development of the world market, advertising language,as a true reflection of the time, is everywhere in our daily life and has a considerable effect on our behavior and action. Therefore, a cross-disciplinary study of the two subjects——an application of the relevant theories of pragmatics to the research of the increasingly active and vital advertising language——is of real value and great significance. This dissertation mainly focuses on the analysis of various samples or slogans from the advertisements at home and abroad, which the author has read or collected as data-base materials. The author starts the research into advertising language from the perspective of micro-pragmatics, namely, from the Anglo-American school of thought that includes such aspects as deixis, implicature, presupposition, speech acts and politeness. Besides, the author presents a thorough analysis of advertising language from the perspective of macro-pragmatics, namely, from the European Continental school of thought that includes such aspects as culture, code-mixing, code-switching, economy principle, and pragmatic failures. Meanwhile, various features of the advertising language are presented and some phenomena have been studied and analyzed. The author has put forward some suggestions concerning our language use and language policy. Up till now, little research has been done into such a cross-disciplinary study which is significantly vital to our economy, culture, and society, and this kind of study enables the audience to possess a multi-dimensional and comprehensive knowledge of the relevant theories of pragmatics, its new development trends, together with a variety of characteristics of advertising language and the good and harm it has done. This kind of theoretical combination and factual analysis will undoubtedly cultivate our pragmatic competence, which will finally lead to the development of our improved language proficiency. This dissertation focuses more on the macro-pragmatics study of advertising language. Research into such aspects as cultural factors, code-mixing, code-switching, economy principle and pragmatic failures not only does good to advertisers or manufacturers, but also helps ordinary people to attach more importance to language use. It goes beyond saying that advertising language in the present world has an abundant content and a rich pragmatic function. It acts as a reflection of culture and society. There are many books and papers on advertising, with an emphasis on its lexical, syntactic and rhetoric levels, but few people have done research into advertising language from the perspective of pragmatics, especially its societal aspect. The purpose of this dissertation is, therefore, to make an observation of language use in the present society and to illustrate the achievement of a maximum economic efficiency via language use through analysis of language resources——advertising language. What is more, research in this aspect may serve as a basis for the further study of language development and promote the improvement of the economy and society. It is the author's great desire that the research done here should lead to a healthy development of advertising language and astrengthening of the construction of language, and finally do good to the development of politics, economy, and culture of the whole society.