Relevance Theory And Metaphor In Advertising Communication

Advertising has become an important international communication due to globalization of economy. Metaphor is frequently adopted in modern commercial advertising and turns out to be an effective and distinctive device. This thesis analyzes metaphors in advertising communication within the framework of Relevance Theory.We start with a literature review on various approaches to advertising language and metaphor. Chapter Three explains Relevance Theory in detail. Relevance is non-demonstrative and is influenced by two factors—cognitive effects and processing effort. Other things being equal, the greater the cognitive effects, the greater the relevance; other things being equal, the smaller the processing effort, the greater the relevance. We propose an equation to clarify the relationship among the three notions. The two principles of relevance are: the Cognitive Principle that human cognition tends to be geared to the maximization of relevance; and the Communicative Principle that every utterance communicates a presumption of its own optimal relevance. Human language communication is regarded as an ostensive-inferential cognitive process, namely the process of cognition and mutual manifestness of the cognitive environments. We propose a flowchart to explain the addressee's comprehension procedure, i.e. the addressee produces the cognitive effects and chooses the explanation of the optimal relevance by using the ostensive information provided by the communicator's ostensive behaviors and the addressee's inferential cognitive ability. The flowchart reflects the dynamic view of context, as the addressee chooses and extends the context and at the same time, the context is changed by existing contextual assumptions.In print advertising, the verbal text is employed as the main channel for communication which is similar to other forms of communications. Metaphor is formed based on the resemblance between things, which is also relevant. Therefore, Relevance Theory can also be applied to metaphor in advertising communication. Relevance Theory and the author's proposals in Chapter Three apply in the analysis of metaphor in advertising communication in Chapter Four. Metaphor is an effective device to attract and hold the reader's attention and to express more with less wording. A short metaphor can express many weak implicatures, some of which the advertiser does not take responsibility for and the implicitness makes the reader feel that there is a high degree of understanding between her and the advertiser. The author proposes a flowchart to explain the reader's comprehension process of metaphor in advertising. The reader extends context and infer weaker implicatures, while at the same time, existing implicatures also change the context.We review a large quantity of advertisements on main stream English magazines and analyze in Chapter Five a few metaphorical advertisements in detail using the theory, focusing on dynamic change of context and weakness of inferred implicatures. We come to the conclusion that Relevance Theory provides a good interpretation of metaphor in advertising communication. The author hopes that this thesis may help advertisers in understanding and composing advertisements to enhance their competitiveness in the international market and that it may enable readers to realize how advertisers convey something more than what they actually claim while appreciating some successful advertisements.