A Study Of Puns In Advertisements—A Relevance Theory Approach

Nowadays, with the quick development of economy and technology information,advertising has becoming an indispensable part of our life. More and more importance hasbeen attached to the research of advertising and advertising language. Advertising is a highlyeffective tool of communication and persuasion. To impress and attract the consumers in thelimited space and time, the advertisers pay more attention to the linguistic devices to promotesales, in which pun is favored by advertisers. It is largely related to the special cognitivefeature of pun.Based on Relevance Theory proposed by Sperber and Wilson, this thesis explains indetail why pun leads to smooth communication in advertising through the analysis of theunderstanding process of puns in advertisements.In the light of Sperber and Wilson, human language communication is regarded as anostensive-inferential process, namely the process of cognition and mutual manifestness of thecognitive environments. Relevance is non-demonstrative and is influenced by twofactors—cognitive effects and processing effort. Other things being equal, the greater thecognitive effect is, the greater the relevance; other things being equal, the smaller theprocessing effort is, the greater the relevance. The two principles of relevance are: theCognitive Principle that human cognition tends to be geared to the maximization of relevance;and the Communicative Principle that every utterance communicates a presumption of its ownoptimal relevance.According to Relevance Theory, the author points out that advertising communication isalso a kind of ostensive-inferential communication, and analyzes the process how advertisers'presumed optimal relevance can be achieved in advertising communication when pun is usedfor ostensive stimulus. In addition, this thesis also makes an analysis of the major advantagesof using pun as ostensive stimuli in advertising communication. Pun interpretation is the most important part of the thesis. Based on the double meaningof pun, the analysis has been carried out in two categories, which contains context analysisand interpretation process analysis. Through studying various forms of puns in advertisements,pun interpretation has been divided into four main types. Through case study in this chapter, itis made clear that different from other rhetorical devices in advertising, such as repetition,alliteration and rhyme, etc, pun application enables the advertisements to achieve thepresumed optimal relevance in several different ways.Lastly, the author points out that not all advertisements containing puns are successful.