The Analysis Of Pun In Advertising Based On Figure-ground Theory

In modern society, with the high-speed development of market economy and the intense competition of commodities, advertising as a tool of transmitting business information is pervasive in people's everyday life. Advertising language, as a special language style, has gradually become a hot topic in the research area. The pun in advertising is a special kind of advertisement, which uses pun as a figure of speech. It is very popular in many successful advertising copies because of its features of implication and novelty. During these years, there are many studies conducted on the pun in advertising, which are mainly from the perspective of pragmatic functions, aesthetic functions and translation. There are also some studies based on cognitive linguistics, such as the study of its generative mechanism from Conceptual Blending Theory and the idiomatic advertisement with phonetic pun from Figure-Ground Theory. This thesis will further study the interpretation mechanism of pun in advertising based on Figure-Ground Theory from the angle of the audiences. This study has some practical significance to the analysis and design of the successful advertisements.This thesis contains five chapters. Chapter One is the introduction which contains the motivation, significance, purpose, methodology and source of examples and the organization of this thesis. Chapter Two introduces some definitions and the previous studies of pun in advertising by foreign and Chinese scholars. Based on this the author proposes her study on this topic. Chapter Three introduces the theoretical basis of this thesis the Figure-Ground Theory in cognitive linguistics, which includes Figure-Ground Segregation, the Principle of Pr?gnanz and the application of this theory. Chapter Four analyzes pun in advertising from Figure-Ground Theory. It studies the Figure-Ground Organization in pun in advertising and explores the audiences'interpretation process of pun in advertising; meanwhile diagrams are made to illustrate this process. Chapter Five is the conclusion, which contains a review of this study, the result and limitation of this thesis and suggestions for further study.The study shows that the pun in advertising has three levels of Figure-Ground Organization: the destruction level (the advertising expression- the common expression), the punning level (the pun-the context) and the joint level (the advertising meaning-the common meaning). The audiences use language knowledge and advertising intention as a base to analyze the pun in advertising and get its destruction level. The destruction level activates the punning level and completes the understanding of pun in advertising in form. The destruction level activates the joint level and integrates two meanings to get the ultimate meaning and complete the understanding of pun in advertising in meaning. The perception results of meaning may vary from different experience in audiences. In the pun in advertising, the interpretation mechanism of the phonetic and semantic pun is the same, but different language knowledge, which is required by their special feature results in some subtle differences. The deviated part in phonetic pun produces two expressions of destruction level, which are different in both form and meaning. The polysemy in semantic pun produces two expressions of destruction level, which are different in meaning but same in form. This subtle difference makes the semantic pun more implicated than the phonetic pun.