Elegance And Popularity In Advertising Language

Since reestablished for more 30years, the advertising industry in Chinese mainland has already developed from scratch and has made remarkable achievements. During this time, research on advertising practices has sprung up. Advertising, which involves in communication, linguistics, semiotics, marketing, art aesthetics and many other subjects of multidisciplinary theory, is the complex of practical art and science. Therefore, a solid theoretical foundation has been laid for our multi-dimensional, all-round study of advertising.Due to continuing reform and opening up, lasting vitality has burst out in the marketing economy, while competition in commodity markets is becoming increasingly fierce. Because of the stimulation of a range of goods, people’s concept of consumption is silently changing:from enjoying the material functions to pursuing spirit and sense. Advertising practitioners have been prompted to actively operate various communication symbols to create and increase the cultural value of products.In activities of advertising communicating, language symbol has been highly admired by staff for creating advertises because of its powerful influence and expression. However, due to lack of guidance of scientific theory, serious chaos has appeared in advertising industry:there are not only elegant advertises of flesh and meaningful prospects, but also popular advertises which can be clearly and easily understood, even some shoddy and vulgar ones. This leads us to find the cause from the angle of language which advertises rely on.The key factor, that determines the style of advertising language, will be explored in this paper by analyzing opposite and coexisting situation of the elegance and popularity in advertising language. To look for and discover the discipline, methods of theoretical synthesis, materials analysis and case analysis will be adopted in this paper.First of all, the concept of "elegance" and "popularity" will be introduced from the semantic perspective, and the historical and cultural origins of the dispute between elegance and popularity in the field of literary aesthetics will be briefly presented. Base on this, this category will be extended to the study of advertising language symbol to point out that, the problem about elegance and popularity also exists in advertising language.Second, the meaning of the research object will be refined combing with definitions of elegance and popularity in literary aesthetics. Meanwhile, according to classifications in literary aesthetics, the current situation of elegant language symbol in advertising will be respectively indicated from aspects of "elegant", "quaint", "graceful", "cultured" etc. In addition, specific performance of popular language symbol will be explained in terms of "popular", "vulgar", "kitsch", "low" etc.Then, the harmonious coexistence of two different language symbols will be introduced from the standpoint of "changing popularity to elegance" and "charmed for popularity". The former will be mainly explained in terms of positive rhetoric while the latter will be taking advantage of the theory of vocabulary.Finally, influencing factors of elegance and popularity will be analyzed from aspects of "product positioning", "consumer" and "media" via using a large number of typical cases and the final conclusion will be smoothly made.In the writer’s opinion, there are no hierarchical differences between "elegance" and "popularity" in the perspective of aesthetic theory. However, when it comes to activities in advertising communication, the conflict is specific and distinguishable. Advertising staff shall determine cultural tastes of advertising language according to consumers’social class, such as occupational status, economic status as well as the level of education.In this paper, concepts of "elegance" and "popularity" will be extended from the field of literary aesthetics to activities in advertising communication, and concrete manifestations of two distinct manners of language symbols will be systematically arranged and generalized. Besides, common methods of rhetoric and selecting words to suit both refined and popular tastes in advertising language will also be highlighted. On the basis of a detailed analysis about main factors affecting tones of advertising language (including product positioning, consumer, media, etc), this paper indicate that consumers’social class is the critical factor. This will not only broaden the research field of advertising, enrich advertising theoretical knowledge, but also clarify practitioners’thinking, and provide a valuable reference for their creating more high quality and highly praised works.