A Study On The Reasons Of Flouting The Maxims Of The Cooperative Principle In English Advertising

With the development of the market economy today, advertisements have spreaded quickly through all over the world and directly affected people s daily lives. As a type of social discourse, advertisements can be characterized from linguistic, pragmatic and cross-cultural perspectives. Advertising language is an indispensable element in advertising and also an important factor to realize advertising purpose.The Cooperative Principle, proposed by American linguist philosopher Grice, is one of the most important principles in linguistics. Based on the Cooperative Principle, this paper expands its applicable scope by connecting it with various English advertisements. By analyzing a large number of English advertisements, the author finds that it is a main feature of advertising language to produce implicatures by flouting the maxims of CP. This paper points out that the advertisements can exert stronger and more persuasive effect by flouting the Cooperative Principle ingeniously. Then from the socio-cultural perspective, this paper makes further inquiry of the influencing factors that accounts for the flouting of the Cooperative Principle. Making use of the methods of illustration, this paper lists out the possible factors as psychology of the masses, social factors, and cultural factors.As a result, this paper can afford some enlightenment on understanding the Cooperative Principle comprehensively. It can also afford certain theoretical reference and guidance when analyzing special effect in English advertisements. On the one hand, the conclusions from the present study offer a wider way for advertising designers to create excellent ads and also make them pay attention to some problems existing in ads. On the other hand, it is also of great help for consumers to understand the implied meaning of ads and avoid being tempted into buying some poor quality products by some deceptive advertising.