Evidentiality In Advertising Text: A Pragmatic Approach

Evidentiality has been extensively studied in linguistics for its function in coding the source of knowledge or for expressing the speaker's attitude towards knowledge.However, few studies examine why particular evidential forms are selected in specific discourse contexts and how that selection affects the evidential interpretation of the information. This paper investigates the utilization of evidential forms in advertisement by employing the Theory of Territory of Information and Adaptation Theory as theoretical frameworks. The study in this paper differs from previous studies of English evidentiality by taking a particular discourse context,advertising language,as the starting point of the investigation. Moreover,evidentials are regarded as index of information state in this research,which determines the context-dependent nature of evidential interpretation.Based on analysis of the pragmatic effect of different types of evidentials in advertising discourse,it is argued that the advertisers frequently exploit evidential strategies to adapt to the communicative context.Specifically,by choosing particular evidential strategies which indicate different sources of evidence and different information ownership,the advertiser succeed in showing high involvement,avoiding responsibility,or making their assertion more reliable.This study shows that,in social interaction,the choice of the speaker's evidential marking is closely related to the speaker's communicative intentions.The findings may shed light on the further characterization of evidentiality used in other specific context instead of advertisements.Besides,implications on the interpretation of advertisements are also attainable as to how the advertisers use adaptability and indexicality of evidentials to enhance the persuasiveness of their advertisements.