Analysis Of Commercial Advertising Slogans From The Perspective Of Intentionality

Advertisements, as an indispensable part of modern commodity and life necessity, floodin all aspects of people’s life incessantly. With rapid development of economy and technology,advertisers try their best to use innovative marketing strategies, advanced technology andunique slogans to attract customers’ attention to buy goods or services in order to increase themarket share, thus getting more profits. Advertising language or slogan, as the conveyer of theadvertisers’ intention of selling, is endowed with connotative, implied or extra meaningbeyond the literal meaning. The progress of time and development of technology pushesforward the advertising slogans to be enriched and innovative. With time passing by,advertising slogans present unprecedented features.Referring to many successful advertising planning cases, a great many scholars andresearchers have turned to analyze the characteristics, features and implied meanings beyondthe literal meaning of advertising slogans from different perspectives, based on a variety ofconnotations in advertising language. The main researching fields involve communicationstudies, consuming psychology, and linguistics. In terms of linguistics, the studies are mainlyon vocabulary features, syntax, and in most cases on rhetorics, including pun, simile, andmetaphor and so on. In addition, some scholars make researches from multi-disciplinaryperspectives, applying theories of macro linguistics like systematic theory, stylistics, andcognition.Because of its diversified and unique features of language use and the consumingpsychology mechanism embodied in it, advertising slogan conveys the advertisers’ intentionof stimulating consuming activities. Thus, this thesis aims to analyze commercial advertisingslogans under the guidance of aboutness, representation, intentional content and intentional attitude, with the researching goal of finding the function of the advertisers’ intentions ininfluencing the formulating of commercial advertising slogans, the role of the intentionalityplaying in stimulating consumption, and above all, the greatness or value of applied meaningin the way intentionality guides social practice.The thesis includes five chapters.Chapter One introduces the panorama of the whole paper. It includes the researchbackground, and the aims and goals of this research. In order to get a comprehensiveunderstanding of advertising slogans, the thesis proposes three research questions to guide theentire analyzing process.Chapter Two makes a literature review of commercial advertisement slogans at homeand abroad. Review of overseas study on advertising slogans includes analysis from theperspectives of rhetorics, stylistics, consuming cognition and cross-media, etc. Review ofdomestic study mainly refers to analysis from both micro-linguistic and macro-linguisticperspectives, in which micro-linguistic studies are mainly about lexical, rhetorical analysisand translation of advertising slogans in cross-countries communication, and macro-linguisticstudies are mainly from perspectives of cognition, systematic function, stylistics, corpus,psychology and so on.Chapter Three is the theoretical frame of this thesis, which is intentionality. The thesisreviews the origin, development, branches and current theoretical implication of intentionality.Through the review and research on the relevant theory, the thesis takes the aboutness,representation, intentional content and attitude, and the relevant theories on intentionalityproposed by John Searle as the theoretical guidance in analyzing commercial advertisingslogans.Chapter Four applies the theoretical frame sorted out in Chapter Three to make specificcase studies. First of all, according to the two properties of intentionality which are aboutness and representation, this thesis analyzes the advertising slogans of sports products and brands;referring to the intentional structure which includes intentional content and intentional attitude,the thesis analyzes advertising slogans of an e-commerce websites and a popular style. Itexplores the practical meaning and value of intentionality in social practice, so thatintentionality can be further explored and better connected with social practice.Chapter Five draws a conclusion of the whole paper. It summarizes the major findings,and points out the limitations of the study; meanwhile, the thesis proposes some suggestionsfor the future study on intentionality to find more entry points to connect with social life,making the theory serve the social practice better and exploring the meaning and implicationof intentionality researching.