Analysis On The Inner Structure Of The Humorous Message In Humorous Print Advertisements

Advertising and humor both enjoy long history. The combination of them createshumorous advertisements. Humorous advertisements first enter the stage of advertising in thelate half of the 19th century, after that they have experienced vigorous developments andgradually become a popular form of advertising praised by both advertising scholars andpractitioners. However, humorous advertisements are still not very popular in China.This thesis reviews some scholars' studies on humorous advertisements, discusses thepopularity of humorous ads and their unpopularity in China, and emphasizes the trend thathumorous ads will gradually become popular in China.Next, the thesis comes to its main part. It discusses the definitions and genres of humor,defines the humorous print ads in this thesis and deduces that the humorous message in thembelongs to situational humor, which is demonstrated through the art and the copy of the printads. Then the author analyzes and compares the three theories on humor, finding Palmer'smodel in the incongruity theory effective in explaining the inner structure of humor. So on thebasis of Palmer's model, the author establishes his new analysis model of the inner structureof the humorous message, which is composed of two parts: one is the humor formed bypreparation stage and comic incongruity, and the other is the connections between humor andthe product or ideas the ads want to sell. After the establishment of the analysis model, theauthor uses it to analyze the inner structures of the humorous messages in 12 ad samples.These case analyses demonstrate and prove that the model can analyze and display the innerstructure of the humorous message clearly. So this model can serve as a criterion to testwhether a print ad is a humorous print ad or not.