A Study Of Foregrounding In Advertising English From The Perspective Of Figure-ground Theory

Cognitive stylistics is defined as a branch of study which approaches texts fromthe cognitive perspective. Figure-ground theory based on prominence principle, as atheory of cognitive linguistics, is widely used in cognitive stylistics to interpretlinguistic phenomenon. Figure, the most prominent part in perception, is the focus ofpeople’s attention; while ground refers to the less prominent part in cognition and thereference to embody the figure.Advertising language is considered to be the most important part in anadvertisement. Foregrounding, as a kind of catchy tool in stylistics, is used widely inadvertisement to get across key selling points to desired prospects in a manner thatattracts attention and stimulates consumers to give serious consideration to product. Ithas been seen as an important means of expressing the difference between everydaylanguages and advertising languages and has been widely accepted as one of thefoundations of stylistics. In this thesis, thirty-three approaches of foregrounding arelisted and analyzed dynamically. They are common in ads and important to effectivecommunication.By means of qualitative analysis, this thesis aims to interpret numerousforegrounding approaches in English advertisements from the perspective offigure-ground theory and find out the way in which the approaches of foregroundingachieve the function of prominence, attraction and persuasion and the way in whichpeople can catch these prominence, attraction and persuasion. The thesis involves five Chapters. Chapter1gives an overall introduction of thewhole thesis. In Chapter2, there are three parts involved in literature review. First,figure-ground theory is introduced. Then, means of foregrounding and its function inlinguistic text are presented. Chapter3interprets the methodology involved in thethesis. Chapter4discusses how the means of foregrounding achieve the function ofprominence, and how these prominences are interpreted by people. Last, conclusionof this research is proposed in Chapter5.In all, by means of numerous analysis of foregrounding in advertising language,the study gets the conclusion that these foregrounding approaches highlight the figureof information via deviation and overregularity. Then, the figure of advertisements issalient in consumers’ mind contrasting to “the ground”. These approaches not onlysatisfy the aesthetic feeling of recipients, but also achieve the ideational function andmake the theme of advertisement prominent.