Realization Of Cognitive Consistency In Female Commodity Advertising Language

Advertising is a means which aims at publicizing products by using all sorts of communication media so as to cause the audiences'purchasing desire; therefore, as the carrier of information transformation and communication, advertising language plays a vital role in sparking audiences'purchasing desire and behavior. This thesis applies Festinger's cognitive consistency theory to explain how female commodity advertising language to realize cognitive consistency with the audiences.This thesis starts with the explanation of the characteristics of female language, and gives a brief introduction to the preceding study on it. The female language research is a branch in the research of language social variation, and focuses on the study of pronunciation, vocabulary, syntax, topics, and so on.Then the thesis points out that the audiences of the female commodity advertising are female customers. Due to the above female language features, the writing of female commodity advertising has to cater to the speaking habits and cognition of the females so as to realize cognitive consistency between producers and customers and then promote sales. The idea of"reader-centeredness"in Reception Aesthetics will make admen focus on the audiences'cognition and create the advertising which meet their cognitive needs. This thesis tries to explain how female commodity advertising language to realize cognitive consistency and then realize the expected effect from the level of lexicon, syntax, and rhetorical devices, etc. The following issues are elaborated in this thesis:Firstly, at the level of lexicon, the use of person pronouns, especially the first person pronouns, can shorten the psychological distance with the audiences so as to help realize cognitive consistency; negative expressions though are infrequently used in advertising, the positive meaning with negative expressions and the double negation can strengthen the voice and stress on the specific features of the products; word formation like derivation, conversion, and abbreviation will add novelty and interest to the advertising which will attract female customers'attention; as an artistic style of language, vague language also increases the charm of advertising language and leave the audiences more imagination.Secondly, at the level of syntax, the cognitive consistency is realized by imperative sentences, interrogative sentences, phrases, repetition and parallelism. Imperative sentences have a power to ask for people's prompt action. Rhetorical questions and question-answer sentences, which ask and are answered all by themselves, play an important role in helping female customers make the final decision to buy the products. Due to the characteristics of simple, advertising language made of noun phrases or verb phrases are easy to remember and are superior to long passages in psychological cognition. The special sentence patterns like repetition and parallelism are not only memorable but also more artistic.Thirdly, the consistency at the level of rhetoric is reflected in the application of various rhetorical devices, like metaphor, simile, hyperbole, personification, pun, and alliteration, etc. They are the most frequently used rhetorical devices in advertising creation with a vital function to attract the audiences'attention through the language variation and give prominence to the brand cognition from other similar products so as to realize the cognitive consistency between admen and audiences to a great extent.