A CMT Approach To Synaesthesia In Chinese Advertising By ZhaoNana

Synaesthesia is the mixing of sensations, the current appeal to more than onesense; the response through several senses to the stimulation of one. Synaesthesia isregarded as a kind of rhetorical device traditionally and former scholars studied it asa rhetorical device. Conceptual Metaphor Theory proposed by Lakoff and Johnsonprovides a new perspective for the research of figures of speech.Because of function in persuasion, advertising language plays an importantrole intense competition of business. Most advertisers believe that synaesthesia canhelp in the realization of the persuasion function in advertising language, so moreand more synaesthesia are applied to lots of advertising language. Although there aremany disciplines studying advertising language, we need more study from acognitive perspective. Relative studies about synaesthetic metaphor in advertisinglanguage were still limited. Therefore, to deepen our understanding in this field, thisthesis attempts to conduct a study on synaesthetic metaphors in advertising languagefrom a cognitive perspective. Synaesthesia can help deepen the consumers’memorizing and understanding of the advertising by metaphor mappings from onesnese to another. From the analysis of synaesthesia in advertising in light of CMT,this thesis gets a conclusion that synaesthesia is a quite important strategy for therealization of the persuasion function in advertising. The present study tends to besignificant not only in study on synaesthesia but also on advertising language, aspecial and important genre in information age. This thesis is a study of synaesthesiain Chinese advertising language from the perspective of cognition. Different from theconventional rhetorical perspective, it tries to study synaestheisa from the perspectiveof cognition using the research method provided by CMT. This thesis considerssynaestheisa as a subject of thinking as well as a subject of language just as metaphor.So the understanding of synaestheisa must follow human being’s general cognitionrules. This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One provides a generalintroduction of the whole research, including the motivation, objectives andorganization of this thesis. Chapter Two reviews the existing studies on advertisinglanguage and synaesthesia. Chapter Three introduces the theoretical basis of thisstudy in detail, which is Conceptual Metaphor Theory. Chapter Four analyzes thecognitive process of synaesthesia in advertising language with CMT. Certaincharacteristics and functions of synaesthesia in advertising language are figured out.The conclusion is made in Chapter Five by summarizing some findings, limitationsof this thesis and some suggestions for the future study.