A Study Of Rhetorical Devices In English Advertisements From A Cross-cultural Perspective

With the development of socialist market economy since China's opening up to the outside world,advertising industry has been developing by leaps and bounds.Especially after China's accession to the World Trade Organization and continuous strengthening of economic globalization,China's foreign trade has developed rapidly and thus it has become a major trading country in the world.Products "made in China" have gradually occupied a large share of world trade market from the bottom to the top.As the main language platform for communication with foreign countries and the main media of China's products into the international market,the importance of English advertisements has become increasingly indispensable.Thus,the study of English advertisements is of great significance in tapping the global market for products under the circumstance of globalization of world economy.The creation of advertisement is a comprehensive sense,it comprises two parts:what to say and how to say.Whether the advertisement can stimulate the cerebral cortex in the shortest time,and the audience converting their unconscious states of appreciation into a conscious concern,"uniqueness" plays a key role.In order to make advertisements different,it is a must to enhance the novelty and originality of the language so as to improve the attraction of advertisements.Therefore,rhetorical devices,as a kind of language beautifier,are widely used in English advertisements for making advertisements sound more credible,reasonable and persuasive.Advertisement and culture are closely related,no matter as a marketing campaign,a cultural form,or a mass communication activity.As different audiences live in different social and cultural environment,their thinking patterns,cultural values,customs and religious beliefs are inevitably different from culture to culture.Thus,consumers will show different cultural characteristics in accepting the advertisement and in performing purchasing action,which is also one of the major obstacles that global-market-oriented industries often encounter in exploiting the overseas markets.If the cultural difference is ignored in the export process by the rising advertising business of China,it is bound to cause cultural conflict and lead to the products unmarketable.Thus,studies in this thesis from rhetorical and cross-cultural fields are of perspective and practical significance.In this thesis,on the basis of Aristotle's Rhetorical Theory,the author analyzes and discusses English advertisements from a cross-cultural perspective.There are five chapters in this thesis:Chapter ? is the introduction part including the research background,the significance of the thesis,methodology and the layout of the thesis.Chapter ? is the literature review which includes four parts.First,it introduces the definitions of advertising,rhetorical devices,culture and cross-cultural communication.Second,it describes the classifications of advertising.Third,it presents the components of advertising communication.Eventually,it summaries the relevant studies on advertisements from a cross-cultural perspective at home and abroad,and introduces the current research status.Chapter ? is the theoretical framework.The basic introduction of Aristotle and the major contents of Aristotle's Rhetorical Theory are expounded in detail.Chapter ? is the main body of the thesis.First of all,under the guidance of Aristotle's Rhetorical Theory,it is necessary to classify rhetorical devices appeared in English advertisements into three types.Those are semantic rhetorical devices,such as pun,hyperbole,metaphor and so on;syntactic rhetorical devices,for example,repetition,parallelism,antithesis;phonetic rhetorical devices,namely alliteration,consonance,onomatopoeia and so on.Then,the author explores how Aristotle's persuasive strategies,namely ethos,pathos and logos work in English advertisements and how those figures of speech exert an influence on the persuasion appeals to move the audience.Eventually,the author discusses the effects of cultural factors,such as cultural difference,cultural values,customs etc,how they affect the persuasion effects in English advertisements from a cross-cultural perspective.The author summaries the rewarding experience and improvement strategies based on the analysis of successful and unsuccessful cases of English advertisements.Chapter ? summarizes the thesis and concludes the theoretical and practical significance of the study from various angles.The author points out the limitations of the study and proposes suggestion to relevant studies.Therefore,based on the Aristotle's Rhetorical Theory,the thesis analyzes and explores English advertisements from a cross-cultural perspective,which further testifies the guidance function of Rhetorical Theory to English advertisements and the influence of cultural difference on English advertisements,and is designed,hopefully,to provide reference and ideas for further studies in relevant fields.