Realization Of Cognitive Consistency In English Advertising

People in general are swept with advertisements in various forms, wherever they go andwhatever they do, and most have made repeated complaints and even developed adverseattitudes towards advertising. Companies and organizations, however, are strengthening theirendeavors to promote their products, services or ideas. An apparent paradox thus emerges inadvertising practices, towards which this thesis manages to give an explanation through theanalysis of advertising language.American socio-psychologist, Leon Festinger (1957) first put forward the cognitiveconsistency theory and pointed out that people are motivated to change and act consistentlywith their beliefs, values, and perceptions when there is psychological inconsistency ordisagreement between two pieces of information. Max Sutherland (1993), an Australianadvertising researcher creatively applied this theory to researches on advertising, and believedthat advertising realizes its intended purpose through methods such as cueing and repetition toconform to cognition of consumers and encourage them to purchase products. As a majorvehicle for information communication and transmission, advertising language plays anirreplaceable role in realization of human cognitions. This thesis studies how commercialadvertising realizes cognitive consistency and expected results from the perspective ofrhetorical devices.Chapter One is an introduction on the thesis that notes the research methodology,sampling standards as well as language analysis basics for as many as 50 ads selected fromsuch authoritative American magazines as Times, Fortune, Wall Street Journal, Forbes as wellas Newsweek. Chapter Two gives a general description of the cognitive consistency theory,human purchasing behaviors and their influential factors, consumer decision-making processand advertising, as well as the relationship between rhetoric and advertising, and rhetoric andpersuasion which can further be interpreted as conforming to cognitive consistency.Chapter Three includes advertising case studies undertaken from the three perspectiveslexical, syntactical and phonological to explain how they manage to exert influence uponconsumer's minds subconsciously. Moreover, slogans have been studied under a separatesubtitle due to their great significance as the mission statement that represents the highlyconcentrated embodiment of business philosophy of an organization. The last chapter drawsand summarizes general conclusion of studies in this thesis, theoretical and practicalsignificances as well as suggestions for further researches.