Advertising Puns Associated With Interpretation

In the modern world, advertising has penetrated into every corner of our life. To impress and attract the consumers in the limited space and time, the advertisers pay more attention to the linguistic devices to promote sales, in which pun is one of the most important. Based on Relevance Theory, this study provides the reason why pun leads to smooth communication in advertising through the analysis of the understanding process of puns in advertising.The thesis applies the cognitive inferring process to interpret the puns in advertising and analyzes the audiences'interpreting of different kinds of puns in advertising with the process. This analysis shows that the application of Relevance Theory in the interpretation of puns in advertising is plausible and feasible. It can better explain why puns containing ambiguity do not hinder but accelerate the communication in advertising. For in understanding puns in advertising, the potential consumers automatically aim at optimal relevance, and in order to achieve optimal relevance, the audiences will pick out from whatever sources a context, in which to process the utterance and gain enough contextual effects. In the course of achieving the optimal relevance, the consumers will eliminate the surface structure meaning and grasp the advertisers'intended intention.Furthermore, for the consumers, the extra cognitive efforts involved in the inferring of puns in advertising are more effective and rewarding, not only developing their cognitive competence, making them obtain pleasure and satisfaction; but also allowing them to know the product or service better, helping them judge whether they can benefit from them. So we can say that it is the cognitive inferring process leads to the successful communication of puns in advertising.