A Study Of Puns In Alcoholic Beverages Advertising From The Perspective Of Conceptual Integration Theory

The fierce competition in brewery industry makes it necessary for the manufacturers to compose unique and memorable advertising words to promote their own products. However, most countries lay down regulations on alcoholic beverages advertising. Compared with other products, the promotion for alcoholic beverages is more difficult. This thesis studies puns in alcoholic beverages advertisement.Puns refer to a humorous expression by means of homophones or homographs under a certain context. It requires the exploration of the implicit meaning seeing through the surface meaning to understand the double meanings. Among the figures of speech adopted in advertisement, puns have become the most popular for the audiences and the most widely-adopted for the advertisement designers because of the attraction and fun generated by puns. The figure of speech in advertisement has been one of the hot spot in research. Centered on the perspectives of construction style, pragmatic functions and aesthetic functions, etc, the previous studies does not present the cognitive comprehension process of puns. Therefore, they couldn’t make a thorough explanation of the dynamic online meaning construction process.This thesis firstly introduces the application and previous study of puns, and then conceptual integration theory. After that, puns in alcoholic beverages advertisement are studied under the four frameworks of conceptual integration theory. The main part of this thesis lies in the analysis of puns in alcoholic beverages advertisement under the four frameworks of conceptual integration theory to reveal the dynamic construction process.Conceptual integration theory, put forward by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner, are developed on the basis of Fauconnier’ mental space theory which includes four mental spaces---input space Ⅰ, input space Ⅱ, generic space and blended space. The counterparts of the two input spaces match together by cross-space mapping. The two input spaces are projected into blended space by means of the shared or newly-developed schematic structure. The mutual mapping of the four spaces constructs a conceptual integration network which is the core of the theory. In this way, conceptual integration theory reveals the dynamic meaning construction process of discourse. In recent years, scholars applied the theory into the dynamic construction process of puns. However, these applications from puns’ construction styles seem to be slightly insufficient in explanation. Based on the four integration network models of conceptual integration theory, this thesis probes deeply into puns by re-classifying them under the four frameworks, thus to reveal the dynamic construction process of the audiences in comprehension.Finally, the thesis summarizes the cognitive process of advertising puns, and reaches a conclusion. In addition, this thesis points out the limitations of the study as well as suggestions for further studies.