The Social Language Of Film Titles

A Movie Title, as an identification symbol, is the first image to the audiences. Meanwhile, a movie title is an important part of the film. A good title may arouse many more people's attention and invite them into the cinema. In that case, the film may enjoy a better commercial profit.Pragmatics is a discipline on studying how language is used in social context, which mainly studies how language users comprehend and use language in a certain situation. With the help of Pragmatics into the analysis of the naming and understanding of a film, we could better understand such phenomena related with film titles.The thesis analyzes the art of naming a film from three perspectives:pragmatic ontology, pragmatic subjects and pragmatic situations. The related Pragmatic theory is couched in the questionnaire. The thesis consists of 7 chapters.The main parts of these are as follows:First, the pragmatic functions of film titles are analyzed, which are referential function, informative function, commercial function and aesthetic function. Second, Co-operative Principle and Relevance Theory are well obeyed between film viewers and film producers. In order to be more attractive, many pragmatic strategies are applied in naming film titles, such as metaphor, metonymy, inderect speech acts, role switch. Viewers may see a film for being attracted by the title or for some other reasons. Second, many related issues may influence the naming a film, such as the screenplay, social background and pragmatic subject's own cognition. At last, two suggestions on naming a film are given, that is:to obey the related rules and laws,to meet viewers'requirements.