An Analysis Of Attention-Attracting Strategies In Advertising Language From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

As a means of promoting sales, advertising has become an integral part of our daily life. Nowadays linguists are paying more attention to the importance of advertising in linguistic study. Scholars try to interpret advertising in the fields of semiotic approach, discourse approach and cooperative principle, but each approach has its own drawbacks. In contrast, relevance theory offers a more convincing explanation for the basic question of how communication between an advertiser and audience is achieved. Based on relevance theory, this thesis would analyze how the advertisers direct the audience of advertisements to acquire optimal relevance by means of the attention-attracting strategies employed in advertising language.There are five chapters in this thesis. Chapter 1 is the introduction to the whole study. Chapter 2 reviews some important notions in relevance theory. Chapter 3 introduces the general knowledge of advertising as well as the ostensive-inferential model in advertising language. This chapter also explores the importance of attracting attention. Chapter 4 is the main part. Based on relevance theory, this chapter reveals how the advertisers direct the audience of advertisements to acquire optimal relevance by means of the attention-attracting strategies employed in advertising language by a lot of examples. The strategies analyzed in this chapter include: pun, metaphor, hyperbole, parody, irony, ellipsis, repetition, rhyme, parallelism and humor. Chapter 5 is the conclusion.According to relevance theory, communication is an ostensive-inferential process and every act of communication is a process of searching optimal...