A Contrastive Study Of Puns In Chinese And English Commercial Advertisements: Conceptual Integration Theory

Pun and commercial advertisements are two main topics in linguistic study andadvertising research respectively. Pun is a common linguistic phenomenon whilecommercial advertisements could be seen everywhere in our social life in the way ofspreading information. When commercial advertisements are trying to transmit theinformation of goods, they are used to playing their specific business functions, suchas: providing information, attracting customers, expanding their market and so on,which makes commercial advertisements are different from general style in terms ofgrammatical structure, selecting words and rhetorical method. Pun as a usefulrhetorical way, in recent years, has been highly concerned by advertisers due to itshumor, funny and environment-adapting.Scholars in domestic and abroad attach importance to pun due to its highlyfrequent using in commercial advertisements. However, their studies are mainlyconcerned about the language strategies of pun’s producer. They did a series ofresearch ranging from the specific language characteristics of pun itself to itspragmatic, social, esthetical and systematical function. But they totally ignored theunderstanding process of puns by customers, that is, they never made any research onpun form the cognitive perspective, which exactly gives birth to this article.In this paper, the author takes Conceptual Integration Theory put forward byFauconnier and Turner as the theoretical framework, making a research on puns inChinese and English commercial advertisements. With100advertisements collectedfrom all walks of life, the author tries to understand the cognitive path andpsychological process of people while they are reading advertisements involved puns.Also the author attempts to make a comparison between puns in Chinese and Englishadvertisements according to the four inner networks of Conceptual Integration Theorypresented as simple network, mirror network, single-scope network and double-scopenetwork. From the cognitive perspective, this paper tends to provide pun a newresearch view, prove the powerful explanation of Conceptual Integration Theory onceagain, and to give advertisers some suggestions.