A Relevance Theory Perspective On Novel Metaphors In Public Service Advertisements

The public service advertisement (PSA) is playing more and more important roleat present with simple form but rich content. It differentiates from the commercial onein that it aims to change public attitudes towards some uncivilized phenomenon andregulate their behaviors instead of pursuing profits. The reason why metaphorsespecially novel metaphors are used in PSA is as follows: First, metaphor has apersuasive function. We know that PSA also attempts to persuade people to changetheir attitudes or behaviors, so the usage of novel metaphor is available. Secondly, themetaphor can include rich implicatures but with a few words, which is beneficial forsaving costs. Thirdly, the usage of metaphorical utterance is easy to attract publicattentions from so many different kinds of advertisements. Then as for the study ofadvertisements, it is no denying that many scholars have studied commercialadvertisements from different perspectives. However, most of them do not payenough attention on PSA. There are a few works from the perspective of linguistics,such as adaption theory, violation of cooperating principle, cultural differences andconceptual blending theory and so on, and fewer works from the relevance andmetaphorical view respectively, let alone their combination. This thesis tries toanalyze some novel metaphors in PSAs within the major framework of relevancetheory on the basis of previous studies. Relevance theory assumes that theinterpretation of metaphor concerns ostensive-inferential model, which includes threeprocesses: identification of explicatures, construction of contextual assumptions andconstruction of contextual implicatures by means of seeking optimal relevance. In thethesis, another theory --conceptual blending theory is also brought into make up someshortcomings of the relevance theory.The author collects 100 English and Chinese PSAs adopted to compensate and 40of them are chosen to be analyzed. The PSAs are some classic and creative one,published by the influential organizations in the United States and other western countries, such as aging services of California, WWF and the American Red Cross,etc. In the thesis, we will analyze some novel metaphors in PSAs, so we will choosethe quanlitative analysis as our study methodology. The significances of the study arethe followings: on the one hand, it helps audiences to understand some metaphors inPSAs; on the other hand, it may inspire advertisement designers to the design PSAs ina creative and unique way; lastly, it provides some suggestions for English teaching.There are also some limitations. First, the access to the data is limit, mainly frominternet; second, the number of data is relatively small; in addition, the analysis isbased on my own interpretation which might be personal and incomplete within theframework of relevance theory in an incomplete way.