A Cognitive Approach To Production Mechanism Of Parody In English And Chinese Advertisements

Advertising, as an efficient way of publicity, has definitely played an indispensablerole in people’s daily life. The aim of advertising is to attract the attention of consumersand inspire their desire to purchase. In the design of advertisements, advertisers pay muchattention to the application of language techniques. For example, rhetorical devices aslanguage techniques are widely adopted. Among figures of speech, parody is veryfrequently used and has become popular in advertisements for its unique rhetorical effects.The researches on parody have been done from the perspectives of rhetorics, psychologyand pragmatics and have made great achievements. However, rarely can we finddiscussions on how parody is produced.Therefore, this thesis aims to explore the production mechanism of parody inadvertisements from a cognitive perspective, based on the cognitive theory“autonomy-dependency alignment”, which was first raised by Langacker (1987) in hisbook Foundations of Cognitive Grammar: Theoretical Presuppositions and later developedinto “Autonomy-Dependency Analysis Framework” by Professor Xu Shenghuan in2007,trying to provide a reasonable explanation for the production mechanism of parody. Thisthesis tries to answer the questions: what motivates the communicators to create parodyexpressions in advertisements? What is the specific means of forming the patterns ofparody in advertisements? How is the generating process of parody in advertisements?Why can parody express the communicators’ true intention? Or in other words, how thecommunicators’ intention is realized and embodied in parody--an abnormal language form.Based on the theoretical framework and taking a short sentence as a research unit, thisthesis makes a quantitative and qualitative analysis of258short sentences of parodicadvertisements，among which128are English advertisements and130are Chineseadvertisements. Through the analysis, it is found that there is always similarity between aparody expression and its source in phonetic level or semantic level. The terms of phoneticparody take up37.97%, including homophony parody takes up23.25%and similar sound parody takes up14.72%；The terms of semantic parody take up62.01%. Due to similarity,parody is produced. It plays a significant role in the production of parody in advertisements.Based on the analysis, the thesis puts forward a framework for the production of parody inadvertisements based on Xu Shenghuan’s framework. In summary, the thesis holds that theparody in advertisements is generated in the following ways:(1) The production of parody expressions are motivated by the advertisers’ intentions(informative intention and communicative intention), especially communicative intention,such as to make expressions concise, comprehensible, novel, humorous, attractive and soon. Parody, as an effective way of expression, can achieve advertisers’ intentions. Therefore,it is given priority in advertisements.(2) However，parody requires a word，a phrase or asentence which is in accordance with the informative intention and familiar by the commonpeople. On the basis of the requirement, the advertisers derive the parody expressions fromtheir corresponding sources through the manipulation of phonetic similarity and semanticsimilarity. The process of derivation is mainly realized by means of phonetic substitution,semantic substitution, movement or insertion.(3) During the derivation of a parodyexpression, its corresponding source inherently sets limit on its form (sound or meaning).That is, a parody expression inherits some characteristics from its source. Therefore, eachparody expression shares a maximum similarity with its corresponding source. It is thesimilarity that activates the source of a parody expression in readers’ mind.(4) The sourcetransmits its own intention to its parody expression by nipping-along. The phonetic parodyapplies synesthesia or the connection of perception to achieve nipping-along between theparody and the source, while the semantic parody applies schema theory. So parody canexpress the advertisers’ intentions as well as achieve a good rhetoric effect throughnipping-along. Actually, this process is realized by human being’s mental perceptualfunction.Based on the ways above, parody expression is eventually generated. The thesis holdsthat as a kind of language phenomenon, parody is a cognitive phenomenon as well. Theproduction of parody expression embodies intentionality of language use. It is stereotypical reasoning based on perceiving similarity relation between things in metal model. Finally,this thesis further discusses how to create a parodic advertisement, pointing out a criterionof creating parody in advertisements and strategies of creating a successful parodicadvertisement.Theoretically, this study enriches the research on parody. It proves that“Autonomy-Dependency Analysis Framework” is feasible and applicable to study parodyand provides a new approach to study parody. This study can also offer help for people tohave a better understanding and application of parody. Meanwhile, we hope that the studycan activate more worthy researches on figures of speech from the cognitive perspective, soas to promote the development of rhetorics and even make a breakthrough.