Meaning Construction Of Parody In English Print Advertisements

In the modern world marked by transmission of information at a soaring speed, advertising plays a more and more significant role, particularly in terms of its special traits of attention, impression and persuasion. Parody, as an effective way of expression, enjoys high frequency of employment in advertisements. Previous studies on parody in the Western society have been mainly conducted from a literary perspective or a non-linguistic perspective, emphasizing its critical and artistic features, while scholars in China, even though having touched on parody from a linguistic perspective, still mainly regard it as a traditional rhetorical device, stressing its aesthetic and rhetorical effects. Up to now, few efforts have ever been made to approach parody from a cognitive perspective, not to mention any probing into the mysterious cognitive activities involved in its meaning construction.Therefore, this paper, resorting to cognitive linguistics, tentatively investigated the backstage mental operations involved in the meaning construction of parody in English print ads within the theoretical framework of prototype theory, gestalt theory, cognitive reference point theory, and in particular Fauconnier's conceptual blending theory (CBT). Based upon analyses and discussion in the thesis, the author (i) tentatively proposed a set of cognitive mechanisms involved necessarily for the meaning construction of parody, thereby offering an alternative understanding of parody as more of a cognitive tool than a linguistic device, more of a cognitive phenomenon than a linguistic phenomenon, (ii) disclosed to some extent the mysterious cognitive activities and mental operations required of the audience when they are decoding and interpreting parodies that advertisers employ intentionally to convey certain predefined messages and attain certain predesired goals, and (iii) further enhanced the explanatory power and wide applicability of cognitive theories, especially CBT.Conceptual blending has complete networks, which function independently according to a set of uniform structural and dynamic principles. There are basically four mental spaces involved in the mental operation: two input spaces, one generic space and one blended space. In blending, elements, structures and relations from input spaces are selectively projected to the blended space. Through cognitive mechanisms of composition, completion and elaboration, an emergent structure embodying the addresser's predefined messages and intentions is developed in the blend; meanwhile cognitive salience of the addressee is gradually transferred, from the implicit meaning context provided by the original parodied expression activated and retrieved from long-term memory, to the emergent structure newly shaped in the blend, fulfilling the meaning construction process of parody. In parodic advertisements, the advertiser's intention is embedded in this newly-born emergent structure, and on completing the transferring of cognitive salience to this novel structure, attention value and memory value of the ad are ultimately fostered. Emergent structure produced in the blend exerts certain effects on audience's cognition, urging them into taking the desired action of the advertiser.