A Cognitive Approach To The Construal Mechanism Of Puns In Advertising-an FGC Analysis

Pun, as a kind of very commonly used rhetorical device, is widely used in manylanguages. Pun, just as its name implies, means to use a word which bears twomeanings. That is to say, in order to realize some special intentions, peopledeliberately make use of homophone or polysemy etc. to make one statement withtwo different meanings. Due to the rhetoric or pragmatic functions of making thelanguage expressions more implicit, more humorous and deeper in semantic meanings,pun is extensively applied in advertising industry for the purpose of promotingproducts. However, the traditional research on punny advertisements mostly focus onthe definition, classification, characteristics, functions and rhetorical effects, etc. So inrecent years, more and more experts and scholars turn their perspectives to thelinguistic field and start to study puns in advertisements from semantic, pragmatic andcognitive perspectives. Among them, the researches on the cognitive analysis of theconstrual mechanism of punny advertisements are very limited, let alone the analysisby integrating several theories.In order to mend the gaps, the present thesis sets up an integrated model—FGC model (Figure-Ground and Conceptual Blending Model)，by the analyzingpower and the limitations of the Conceptual Blending Theory and Figure-GroundTheory in the interpretation of puns in advertisements. Then, this new model isapplied to the analysis of the four kinds of the puns in advertisements. Through thisqualitative analysis on puns in advertisements, it is found that the meaning construalprocess of puns in advertisements is based on the four input spaces of ConceptualBlending Theory and a Figure-Ground Space which is the creative point in thisthesis. At last, by the process of blending and projecting, the goal of advertisers arereached.This thesis can be subdivided into five parts. The first chapter gives a briefintroduction of the research background, objectives, methodology and data collectionas well as the layout of this thesis. Chapter two is the literature review, which provides the definition, classification, characteristics and functions of pun. It alsodiscusses the previous studies on puns from home and abroad and their limitations ofeach studies. In Chapter three, on the basis of the detailed introduction of the CBTand the FG theory, their weaknesses have been found out and based on theseweaknesses, a new integrated model is constructed. Chapter four gives the exampleanalysis based on the new model to analyze the construal mechanism of each kind ofthe punny advertisements. Chapter five makes a conclusion of the whole study, whichincludes the contributions, limitations of this present study and gives somesuggestions for the further study.