Degree Of Fuzziness In Commercials And Its Pragmatic Values

Fuzziness is one of the primary properties of natural language. Since Zadeh (1965) proposed the Fuzzy Set Theory, many researchers have been aroused to conduct systematically descriptive researches on fuzzy expressions. especially from the semantic perspective. Commercial advertising, as one significant communicating bridge that links advertiser and consumer, is supposed to provide consumers with information of clearness and accuracy. However, in order to realize the communicative intentions, advertisers frequently adopt fuzzy expressions in their commercial advertisement when it’s necessary. Out of concerns of this kind of language phenomena, the author makes an empirical analysis on fuzzy expressions in commercial advertisement and an exploratory study on its scale measurement as well as its pragmatic values. The thesis will be presented as the following chapters:Chapter one is the introducing chapter, which specifies the research object, significance and the train of thoughts. In chapter two. the previous literature on fuzziness has been reviewed.Chapter three is the descriptive discussion of fuzzy commercial advertisements, to better specify the study object, commercial advertisements are divided into three subtype:product-oriented advertisement. enterprise-oriented advertisement and promotion-oriented advertisement. Then. the descriptive discussion develop from the following aspects, including specification on definition and classification of the commercial advertisements the vocabulary and its three sub-branches:sound, form and meaning, the phrase pattern and the rhetoric devices. The author also explores the essences of fuzzy expressions in commercial advertisement, which can be generally exemplified as two models:1) The endocentric fuzziness, with only one central meaning in fuzzy expression;2) The exocentric fuzziness, with more than one possible meaning but without a central meaning.At the same time, to avoid the controversy on how to clearly definite a fuzzy and a non-fuzzy advertisement, a further investigation with the quantitive method. on the degree of fuzziness(DOF) in commercial advertisement and their differentiations in pragmatic values was carried out. instead of qualitative method only. From the results of the questionnaire designed according to the referred measurement standard.we can sec the comprehensive DOF value in Jingzhou is1.73, between the range F and F Enterprise-oriented advertisement covers the minimum DOF. followed by product-oriented advertisement. Promotion-oriented advertisement takes the maximum value of mean DOF with1.84. Among them, the DOF of product-oriented advertisement is the closest to average degree so that its design for DOF is proved to suit much more customers" expectation:the promotion-oriented advertisement is of the lowest derivation, which indicates that DOF of this type is the most stable and it is the ideal object for the further investigation-evaluation of the pragmatic significance of DOF.As for exploring the pragmatic function of fuzziness in chapter five, this paper respectively demonstrates the conflict between the positive effectiveness on the part of the advertiser’s intention and the disputing cases as negative effectiveness of fuzzy language on the part of the consumers and propose to take the third evaluation index for comprehensively evaluating the pragmatic values of fuzziness and DOF. The results show that among the DOF values the advertisements of different kinds respectively have, that of promotion-oriented advertisement, is a bit higher than that of the others and leads to an unsteady effect on stimulating consumer’s buying behavior. The final chapter, as the conclusion chapter. summarizes and evaluates the realistic significance of.the study and its limitation.