Relevance Theory And Advertising Communication

A great amount of researches in advertising have been conducted by scholarsfrom the field of linguistics. It seems that none of them provides a satisfying andthorough answer to advertising. Scholars working in different fields of linguisticstend to concentrate on the aspects of their own interests. It has been shown thatunderstanding advertisements is not merely a matter of encoding and decoding,but it should also be best approached from the pragmatic perspective. However,pragmatists do not present a convincing account of the nature and role of context.Instead, they attempt to define communication in terms of several maxims.Furthermore, advertising, as a special form of communication, is a dynamicprocess. The stylistic and the discourse analyses seem to give static descriptions.In the book Relevance: Communication and Cognition published in 1986,Sperber and Wilson developed relevance theory, which maintains thatcommunication is a process involving ostension and inference and that humancommunication is governed by the principle of relevance: every act of ostensivecommunication communicates a presumption of its own optimal relevance.Relevance theory is such a cognitive theory that provides us an ideal tool foranalyzing advertising in the effective communication which is geared to a largetarget audience.Based on Sperber and Wilson's relevance theory, the present study analyzesthe characteristics of advertising communication and how the British audienceacquires optimal relevance through the linguistic attention-attractingstrategies---rhetorical devices adopted by the British advertiser in Britishcommercial advertising. Through the analysis in this thesis, the thesis aims topoint out the importance of the attention-attracting strategies adopted by theadvertiser relevance-oriented in successful advertising communication;and givesome hints to the Chinese advertiser, hoping to help him at home and abroadmarkets when he creates advertising copies, especially when he producesadvertisements aiming at the British market through applying the linguisticattention-attracting strategies---rhetorical devices under the guidance ofrelevance theory;and offer some implications to the Chinese audience, hoping tohelp him have a better understanding and appreciation of the linguisticattention-attracting strategies in British advertising from the cultural perspective;and also give some hints to the British advertiser and audience. The presentresearch is conduced on the basis of case studies, thus the research methodemployed in this thesis is qualitative.Ostensive-inferential communication happening in the advertising socialcontext shows that trust and cooperation between the interlocutors are limited orlacking. In order to achieve the purpose of informing and persuading, theadvertiser may employ various attention-attracting strategies. It is theseattention-attracting strategies that give impetus to the audience's inferentialprocess and help the audience acquire optimal relevance. This study presents howthe attention-attracting strategies help the audience acquire optimal relevance anddiscover the informative intention of the advertiser, and highlights the analysis ofthe interpretation process of five linguistic attention-attractingstrategies---rhetorical devices employed by the British advertiser in Britishcommercial advertising from a relevance approach. Based on the case studies ofthe linguistic attention-attracting strategies, the ostensive-inferential cognitiveprocess model in successful advertising communication is obtained by the author.The result of the study indicates that the attention-attracting strategies arecrucial to the success of the advertising communication. Thus, it may help theadvertiser explore more effective attention-attracting strategies in producingcreative advertisements under the guidance of relevance theory. The thesis offersimplications to the British advertiser and audience. What is more important, thepresent study can help the Chinese advertiser incorporate the awareness of Britishculture into compiling his advertising aiming at the British market throughapplying the linguistic attention-attracting strategies---rhetorical devices underthe guidance of relevance theory. It may also help the Chinese audience minimizethe negative impact of cross-cultural differences to understand the linguisticattention-attracting strategies in British advertising copies.