A Cognitive Study Of English And Chinese Parodic Advertisements

As a figure of speech,parody is widely used in our daily life,which attracts more and more attention of the scholars both home and abroad.The previous researches on parody have been done from different perspectives and have made great achievements. However,it must be pointed out that most of the researches have typically focused on the rhetorical features of the parodies,such as the classifications,the functions and the contrastive study of parodies.Parodies pervade in the English and Chinese advertisements and played an important role in conveying the advertisers' ideas.On basis of a simple contrastive study of the parodic advertisements,we take a close look at the classifications and features of the parodies especially in the context of the advertisements.Mostly,they are composed by the means of word parody,phrase parody and text parody.Moreover, they can always make the parody humorous,exaggerated,vivid or novel.However, how are these parodic advertisements formed? What underlies the phenomenon? Though some discussions have been made on the issues,still the analysis is either too general or too obscure to provide a thorough and satisfactory explanation.In this present study,we attempt to make out the mechanisms of the production and understanding of the parodic advertisements in the cognitive perspective,basing on the Autonomy-dependence framework originated by Langacker and developed by Professor Xu Shenghuan in Henan University.In the thesis,we have the following findings about the mechanism of parody's production:·The production of parody expressions is motivated by the intention(informative intention and communicative intention) especially communicative intention,such as criticism,exaggeration,humor,novelty,conciseness and so on.·With the guidance of intention,the composer derives the parody expression from a conventional expression through the manipulation of semantic and(or)phonetic similarity.And this process is realized mainly by means of substitution,movement or insertion.·During the derivation of a parody expression,its corresponding source inherently sets limit on its form.That is,a parody expression inherits some qualities from its source.Therefore,each parody expression can share a maximum similarity with its corresponding source.In the case of understanding the parodies in the advertisement on basis of the Autonomy- Dependence framework,we have other achievements in the thesis:·To obtain the informative intention sometimes requires extra efforts to modify their cognitive environment,either to strengthen the existing assumptions of the source or weaken or even reject the assumptions of source already in mind.·Nipping-along of the intention is the cognitive effect on the hearers' mind that is realized through human beings' mental perceptual function on the basis of similarity. In other words,by nipping along,the intention is figured out,the contextual effects are produced and the parodies are understood.An overall theoretical study of the production and the understanding of the parodic advertisements have prepared us a guidance of creating a successful parodic advertisement,including evaluating the cognitive effects of parodic advertisements and concluding four strategies that good parodic advertisements should possess.