A Study Of Persuasion Of Advertising Language

Advertising, being a product of market economy, is an indispensable form of commercial communication in the modern society. Communication is realized by means of signs. Language, being one of the most expressive and convenient systems of signs in human communication, is enormously used in advertising.Guided by the Relevance Theory, this paper is intended to make a tentative study of the persuasion of advertising language.The Relevance Theory of Sperber and Wilson regards human language communication as an ostensive-inferential cognitive process, namely the process of cognition and mutual manifestness of the cognitive environments. The parties involved in the communication cooperate successfully as both of them have the best cognitive pattern, i.e. relevance. On the one hand, the speaker sets in his utterance ostensive stimuli to achieve his information intention and communication intention. On the other hand, the listener, by using the Relevance and the ostensive information provided by the speaker's inferential cognitive ability, ostensive behaviors, produces the context with his inferential cognitive ability, and chooses the explanation of the best relevance from various semantic expressions. Obviously, the context under the Relevance Theory remains changeable, uncertain and dynamic. On the basis of Sperber and Wilson's relevance theory, this thesis analyzes the persuasion of advertising that is a special communication form. Advertising communication is also ostensive-inference process. So the achievement of RT theory can be used to give new guidance to the study of persuasion of advertising language.