Analysis Of Puns In Commercial Advertisements Based On CIT

As one of the commonly used rhetoric devices, puns tactfully utilize the word’s features of the homophony or homonymy to make one word or sentence have two or more different meanings, which creates the effect of making the finishing point. Therefore, puns are widely favored by the advertiser, which also arouses the author’s dense interest to have a better investigation. This thesis aims to have a research on puns in commercial advertisements from the perspective of CIT.This thesis is going to interpret how the audiences unscramble the cognitive process of puns based on the theory of CIT put forward by cognitive linguists Fauconnier&Turner (1997). In this thesis,400pieces of commercial ads are collected from various kinds of commercial ads. And to have a better knowledge about why and which kind of pun in commercial advertisement is favored by the foreigners, the author conducts a questionnaire. Then the tool of SPSS11.5is used to classify and make statistics to the data.Trough the analysis, it is found that the reason why puns are becoming more and more prevailing in commercial ads is because it can help to reach the following cognitive functions:1. seek "common ground" while reserve "differences";2. realize the guiding function of advertising language;3. meet the audiences’psychological satisfaction. Besides, according to the process, the author concludes three factors which are needed to accurately interpret the implied meaning of puns. They are1. understand the different meanings of English words and phrases;2. comprehend the English slangs;3. know the political, economic and cultural aspects of English-spoken countries respectively.It is hoped that this thesis concerned with the analysis of puns in commercial advertising can provide the advertisers with some enlightenment in advertising making and offer the business English learners a new viewpoint to interpret the phenomenon of puns.