Fuzziness In Advertising Language

It is generally believed that the basic percepts of good advertising writing are simplicity, brevity, accuracy and precision, and that vagueness, ambiguity and imprecision should be avoided. However, along with the development of fuzzy linguistics, fuzziness is founded to be widely applied in advertising language. As is generally recognized, the purpose of advertising is to persuade. In advertising communication, advertisers not only transfer information in a technical sense, but also convey their intentions of performing such activities as suggesting, advising, inviting, tickling, etc. The application of fuzziness not only satisfies the communicative intention of advertising language but also makes the language more attractive.This study analyzes the functions and realizations of fuzziness in advertising, illustrates the cognitive procedure of audiences in the process of fuzziness understanding in terms of Relevance Theory and consumer behavior models. In addition, this study reveals how fuzziness helps audience achieve the effect of optimal relevance, hence influences their purchasing behaviors. In the end, the author concludes that, in regard to contextual effects and the information processing procedure, there exist two types of fuzziness in advertising.According to Relevance Theory, communication is an Ostensive-Inferential process. In this process, the communicator produces a stimulus which makes manifest an intention to make ostension. Ostension produces two layers of information: informative intention and communicative intention. The audience, then, processes the information in terms of relevance.Owing to the profitable nature of advertising, the audience tends to be reluctant to cooperate in the communicative process of advertising, which is the peculiar feature of advertising language. In order to grab the audience's attention,advertiser employs fuzziness. In this case, fuzziness is regarded as the so-called"ostension"in the Ostensive-Inferential process. On the one hand, fuzziness helps attract audience's attention; and on the other, it helps convey the communicative intention of advertiser and therefore, leads the audience to achieve the effect of optimal relevance.To sum up, through studying fuzziness in advertising language, the author hopes to provide the most satisfactory answer to the basic question of how communication is achieved in advertising and how the appropriate use of fuzziness helps copywriters or advertisers achieve their goals successfully.