A Study Of Approximators In Business Advertisements With The C-R-A Model

Hedges are commonly-used in our daily life.This thesis takes the use of approximators in business advertisements as the research topic.Our aim is to have a more comprehensive and deeper understanding of this kind of phenomenon.Based on the cooperative principle,relevance theory and adaptation theory,the present thesis aims to do a research on one type of hedges named approximators.It tries to combine the three theories(a C-R-A model) which are proved to be complementary to a large extend.The author proposes a C-R-A model for the present study based on Liao Qiaoyun's model.We attempt to get a deeper and more complete understanding of the use of approximators in business advertisements.The present study mainly consists of the three perspectives of looking at the phenomenon of using approximators in business advertisements.The author mainly employs the qualitative method,with the quantitative method as an auxiliary. Interviews with the potential customers are conducted in order to investigate the potential customers'attitudes and their intuitive understanding of approximators.The thesis discusses the semantic features of using approximators from the CP approach. There are mainly four features found when using approximators in business advertisement:cancellability,indefiniteness,indirectness,and markedness.These features of using approximators influence the creation of an advertisement.Besides, from the production side of an advertisement,we find that the three worlds(the social world,mental world,and physical world) proposed in AT are being adapted by the advertisers in the process of copywriting an advertisement.There are many factors involved in the production process of creating a business advertisement with approximators.They include factors such as the advertisees'desire and motivation, the social settings and institutions,and the time and space.These factors also influence the writing of an advertisement.RT is mainly looking from the advertisees' perspective.We conduct interviews with 15 people in order to find out the understanding of approximators by the potential customers.The finding is that the use of rounders probably makes the advertisement less effective for they may not seem to be true to the potential customers.The customers may have the assumption in their mind that the advertisers are trying to maximize the benefits of buying the products in order to promote and sell them.Therefore,they are not likely to believe in the truthfulness of the advertisements.On the other side,the use of adaptors such as"very"or"extremely"and the like helps make an advertisement effective because they direct the customers'attention to the selling points of the products.It helps promote and sell the products.At the end of the study,the author also suggests several means for the purpose of improving the effectiveness of advertisement writing.