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~ ~:t:::k. )Hr 7 II~ "::l ~ ~m-m-;;x~ -----=---..;"...:....:.......:~-=----- J; JJU 2005Jaj ~~ 1?r titi~ ~ Vffl fitJ~~tm ~t~ (I OJOL!-2) 15 I) A PRAGMATIC APPROACH TO ADVERTISING ENGLISH by Zhen Guichun A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate School and College English in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master 'Of Arts Under the Supervision of Professor He Zhaoxiong Shanghai International Studies University May 2005 Acknowledgements My special gratitude goes to Professor He Zhaoxiong for his consent to be my supervisor, which is a great encouragement to me, for his insightful advice and above all careful scrutiny of both the outline and the draft in materializing the present thesis. Furthermore, Professor He's scrupulous attitude in doing research and teaching and his kindness to students impress me deeply, which will benefit me for my whole life. I also wish to express my gratitude to Professor Lv Guangdan, Professor Meideming, Professor Li Ji'an and Professor Shudingfang, whose lectures enhanced my interest in linguistics as well as widened my academic view. lowe a particular debt of gratitude to my family members who support me all the time with their love. Especially I wish this small progress in my life could be seen by my dear beloved mother in heaven and could make her happy and proud. I am also indebted to my dear colleagues, who have carried on subsequent discussions with me and sparked me to my thesis. Only with the help of so many people can this thesis have been made possible. Surely the remaining faults in this thesis are entirely mine. Abstract Whatever we do and wherever we go, we are certain to encounter advertising. Commercials will reach you when you tum on the radio or TV; advertisements will greet you when you pick up a magazine or a newspaper; logos banners will flash before your eyes when you surf on the Internet. Few things in our daily lives are as pervasive and influential as advertising. Eventually, advertising has become a common target of many subjects, linguistics being one, in which advertising language has been considered a special variety of language. So far the study on advertising language has been approached from five main perspectives: stylistic, semiotic, discoursal, sociolinguistic, and pragmatic. Enlightened by all these methods, I will study the advertising language (mainly consumer press advertising English) from the pragmatic perspective. As a special communication between advertisers and consumers, the aim of advertising is to persuade, that is, to ask people to purchase the products. But advertisers can't say this directly because this may offend consumers and therefore advertisers like to employ conversational implicature in advertising. Grice's theory on conversational implicature, the Cooperative Principle and the four maxims of Quantity, Quality, Relation and Manner are the major theoretical support for this study. The flouting of the CP Maxims in advertising is explored in great detail. Then a whole chapter is devoted to the reasons why advertisers apply conversational implicatures in their ads. Several reasons have been spotted, such as to be economical, to make advertising language interesting, to increase the force of advertising message, to be polite etc. Moreover it is pointed out that politeness is the main reason, because advertisers try to show their concern, commendation, agreement, sympathy to consumers and try to be modest sometimes. This thesis also analyzes the influence of pragmatic principles on word choice in advertising, which hasn't been done before. Key Words: Advertising English, Cooperative Principle, Politeness Principle 中文摘要 广告无时无刻不包围着人们,充斥着人们生活的每一个角落。由于它的性质,广 告尤其是商业广告的最终目的是劝说人们购买产品,为实现这一最终目的,广告商〈说 话人)千方百计地吸引人们的注意力,鼓动、劝服、诱导消费者(听话人〉花钱购买 其商品,其中之一计就是充分利用语言。由于广告的普遍性,广告语言己经引起了很 多语言学者的关注,以至于被认为是一种语言变体。前人对其进行了符号学分析,文 体学分析,话语分析法分析以及语用学分析。本文在现有研究的启发下,从语用学角 度对广告语言主要是印刷商业广告英语进行分析研究。 在广告这种单向隐含的言语交际方式中,消费者对广告商往往持有不信任的态 度,双方对信息的知情权也是不平等的,因此广告语言往往是间接的,会话含义经常 被广告商作为一个策略来使用。所以在广告例子中,广告语对会话准则的‘违反'将 会被详细探讨。广告商采用会话含义的原因有多种,作者提出了-些新的原因,如节 约、使语言有趣、礼貌等,而礼貌原则是广告商采用会话含义的主要原因,因为广告 商试图用惠、赞扬、赞同、同情、谦虚等手段来打动消费者并试图去维护消费者的面 子。同时广告作为一种文体,用词有独特的特点,语用学原则在广告中的运用也可以 解释广告选词用词的动机。 关键词 z广告英语合作原则礼貌原则 Contents Acknowledgements Abstract in English Abstract in Chinese Chapter 1 Introduction.......................................................... Chapter 2 Review of Literature on Advertising and Advertising English 1 2.1 Review of Literature on Advertising 3 2.1.1 Definition of Advertising 3 2.1.2 Classification of Advertising 4 2.1.3 Function of Advertising............................................................... 5 6 ,7 2.1.4 Aim of Advertising 2.1.5 Nature of Advertising 2.2.1 Stylistic Approach 8 8 2.2.2 Semiotic Approach....... 9 2.2.3 Discoursal Analysis 10 2.2 Review of Literature on Advertising English 2.2.4 Sociolinguistic Approach 2.2.5 Pragmatic Approach.................................. 2.3 Summary. ' 11 . 12 13 Chapter 3 Conversational Implicature and Advertising English 3.1 Conversational Implicature 14 3.2 Cooperative Principle and the Four Maxims 15 3.3 Conversational Implicature in Advertising 17 3.3.1 Flouting of the Maxim of Quantity in Advertising 19 3.3.2 Flouting of the Maxim of Quality in Advertising 24 3.3.3 Flouting of the Maxim of Relation in Advertising 29 3.3.4 Flouting of the Maxim of Manner in Advertising ,31 3.4 Data Analysis 34 3.5 Summary 36 Chapter 4 Motives for the Application of Conversational Implicature in Advertising 4.1 To Be Economical. 37 4.2 To Give Themselves a Way out 37 4.3 To Make Advertising Language More Interesting 38 4.4 To Increase the Force of Advertising Message 39 4.5 To Be Polite 39 4.5.1 The Regard for Consumers' Face and other Advertisers' Face 39 4.5.2 Maxim-based Politeness Principle in Advertising 41 4.5.3 Tug-of-war of CP and PP in Advertising........................................... 45 4.6 Summary. . 47 Chapter 5 Word Choice and Conversational Implicature in Advertising 5.1 Use of SimpleVerbs......................... 5.2 Use of Compound Words.................................................................. 5.3 Use of Evaluative adjectives................................................................ 5.4 Use of I..oanwords............................................................................ 5.5 Use of Misspelling and Coinage 5.6 Summary....... . Chapter 6 Conclusion. 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 Bibliography, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 A Pragmatic Approach to Advertising English Chapter 1 Introduction Some say advertising is purely an economic activity with one purpose: to sell. Others state advertising is the mirror and maker of culture and its words and images reflect the present and the past. Whatever it is, we can't neglect one fact, that is, advertising is ubiquitous and an inescapable part of our life-on radio and television, in newspapers and magazines, on computer screens and mobile phones and even on city streets and buses. We are exposed to advertisements every day and are confronted with advertisements everywhere. Since advertising is ubiquitous, the language used in advertising has aroused great interest of many experts in many disciplines, especially in linguistics because advertising language aims at brevity, preciseness and clarity of information besides the attempt to inform, attract and persuade people towards certain actions. So the way language is used remains an important influencing factor, which demands a systematic study. The main purpose of this study is to make an adequate analysis of the language used in advertising, mainly advertising English, within the framework of pragmatics. The key theories employed in this thesis are Cooperative Principle and Politeness Principle. Firstly, I will .talk about how language is used in advertising. I shall not attempt to provide a survey of the types of linguistic devices that are used in advertising, which was first done by Leech in 1966, because there is of little point in doing so. Instead, I shall concentrate on the linguistic strategies employed by advertisers from a pragmatic perspective. In advertising, advertisers can't ask consumers to buy their products directly because this will offend the consumers. So some strategies are employed, implicature being one, which is generated by the flouting of the CP maxims. Secondly, the reasons for using conversational implicature in advertising will be studied. The main reason for using conversational implicatures is politeness. Advertisers would like to maintain consumers' and other advertisers' face so the face theory is often applied in advertising. What's more, in order to persuade consumers, advertisers behave indirectly and politely by promising benefit for consumers if they try their products. Consumers like to get benefit, like to be praised and like to be approved of while the use of Politeness Principle in advertising can make the advertising meet the consumers' needs. 1 A Pragmatic Approach to Advertising English Politeness Principle is the development of Cooperative Principle but this doesn't mean that Cooperative Principle should always be subordinate to PP. If PP is paid too much attention to in advertising, untruthfulness and deception will occur. So there is a tug-of-war between CPandPP. Thirdly, word choice in advertising is careful so as not to offend consumers. The application of pragmatic principles in advertising will influence the advertisers' word choice. In this paper, the main subject of study is the commercial consumer press advertisements. Most of the data I shall be working with is collected in a random way from magazines: Reader's Digest, Time, Newsweek, BIle, People and Forbes (issues of 2000-2004). They are analyzed both quantitively and qualitatively. The reason why these magazines are chosen is that these magazines have a huge circulation, covering all kinds of audience. The rest of the data is from some popular books about advertising English published in China. As a rule, Chapter 1 serves as the introduction part, which involves the purpose, scope and organization of the thesis. Chapter 2 is a survey of literature on advertising and advertising language. It gives a description of the definition, function, aim, classification and nature of advertising for the sake of the further study. At the same time, several approaches to advertising language are assessed, including their contributions and limitations. Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 make up the body of the thesis. In Chapter 3, the issue concerning the strategy adopted by advertisers in advertising language is discussed in detail in the light of Cooperative Principle. Chapter 4 focuses on the reasons for using conversational implicatures. In Chapter 5, the influence of pragmatic principles on word choice in advertising will be explored. Chapter 6 winds up the whole thesis with a summary, limitations of the study and directions for future study. 2 A Pragmatic Approach to Advertising English Chapter 2 Review of Literature on Advertising and Advertising English Up to now, there has been accumulated an extensive literature on advertising, in the form of books, monographs, reports, journal articles and speeches. So before we analyze advertising language in great detail, it is necessary for us to present a brief picture of advertising. 2.1 Review of Literature on Advertising 2.1.1 Definition ofAdvertising The word of "advertise" can be traced back to the Latin word "Advertere", meaning "tum toward" from ad- "toward" + vertere "to tum". Based on this word, in the 15th century, the word "advertir" appeared in French with the meaning of "warn" or "to attract other's attention". It is obvious that English borrowed the word from French and the modem, commercial meaning was fully developed by the 18th Century', Definitions of advertising are numerous and they vary on the basis of different angles and purposes. Albert Lasker, the father of modem advertising, said that advertising was "salesmanship in print". Though this definition was given long before the advent of radio and television, and the nature and the scope of the contemporary advertising were considerably different from what they are today, this repeatedly-quoted definition indicates that the ultimate purpose of advertising is to sell with skills. Another definition is provided by the Encyclopedia Britannica defines Advertising: The techniques and practices used to bring products, .services, opinions or causes to public notice for the purpose of persuading the public to respond in a certain way toward what's advertised. Contrasted with this general definition, the next definition put forward by American Marketing Association is more specific in meaning: Advertising is any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, or services by an identified sponsor. 1 http://www.etymonline.com 3 A Pragmatic Approach to Advertising English Although this more specific definition clarifies what advertising is, and meanwhile, offers insights into what advertising is not, it still has its shortcomings, for it makes no mention of the advertising media. A widely-accepted definition of advertising was developed by Bovee, C. L. & Arens, W. F in 1989: Advertising is the nonpersonal communication of information, usually paid for and usually persuasive in nature, about products, services, or ideas by identical sponsors through various media. (Boveeinrens, 1989:5) If we take this definition apart and analyze its components, it can be seen that advertising contains several elements: a) it is nonpersonal, which means advertising is not directed to individuals but groups of people; b) it is paid for by some sponsors; c) it is persuasive, which is intended to gain people's converts to a product, a service, or an idea; d) sponsors can be identified; e) various media are used, like newspapers, radio and television etc. Only when all the elements are existent can an advertisement be called an advertisement. In this paper, the term of advertising is interpreted more narrowly and therefore it is vital for us to have a look at the classification of advertising. 2.1.2 Classification ofAdvertising Advertising can be classified by four main criteria: target audience, geographic area, medium, and purpose and each of these criteria includes several categories. Based on target audience, advertising can fall into two categories: business advertising which directs to people who buy or specify goods and services for business use and tends to appear in specialized business publications or professional journals, in direct-mail pieces or in trade shows, and consumer advertising which is typically directed to ordinary consumers and reaches them by appearing in the mass media-s-Tv, radio, newspaper and magazines. On the basis of geographic area, advertising falls into four types: local, regional, national and international. Advertising can be transmitted by many channels or media, such as radio, television, newspapers and directories. As a matter of fact, three categories can be summarized: print advertising or press advertising, electronic advertising, out-of-home advertising and directories. 4 A Pragmatic Approach to Advertising English Advertising can also be classified according to the sponsor's objectives. Some ads promote a product or service; others promote ideas. Some advertisements are meant to help make profits for the advertisers; some are sponsored by nonprofit groups. Some ads try to spur the target audience to immediate action, others to create awareness or understanding of the advertiser's offering. Three pairs can be sorted: product versus non-product advertising; commercial versus noncommercial advertising; action versus awareness advertising. The classification of advertising is clearly shown in the following table: By Target Audience By Geographic By Medium By Purpose Print (newspaper, magazine) Product Area Consumer International & Non-product National Business Industrial Regional & Electronic (Radio, Television, Commercial Internet) Non-commercial Out-of-home Outdoor(posters, Primary demand bulletins) & Trade Selective Transit(buses, Professional demand trains, stations) Agricultural Local Directories Direct action & Indirect Action Despite the popularity of TV adverts, the focus of this paper is 'commercial consumer press advertising'. The reason is that it is easier to be stored, to be reproduced and to be studied than TV adverts as TV commercials extend in time and make use of the combined effect of sound and picture (Vestergaard and Schroder, 1985: 10). I shall adhere to the convenient usage of 'advertising' meaning 'commercial consumer press advertising' in the following chapters unless there is something special to be said about the other types. 2.1.3 Function ofAdvertising According to William F. Arens, advertising has the following functions: o To identify products and differentiate them from others. oTo communicate information about the product, its features, and its location of sale. o To induce consumers to try new products and to suggest reuse. o To stimulate the distribution ofa product. 5 A Pragmatic Approach to Advertising English o To increase product use. OTo build value, brand preference, and loyalty. o To lower the overall cost ofsales. (Arens, 1996: 24) As a matter of fact, all these functions are summarized by advertising researchers from the economic point of view. However when we discuss functions of advertising, we are mainly concerned with its functions to influence the advertisers. As far as commercial consumer advertising is concerned, it always urges people to consume more by making them feel dissatisfied or inadequate. So Crystal and Davy (1983:222) state that there are two main functions of advertising: informing and persuading. To inform means providing consumers with the news of new products or prices or new uses for products and to persuade means inducing consumers to purchase products. But advertising must be more than informational to be successful and it must be persuasive to move people to action. However, with consumers in the picture, the functions become complicated because different groups of consumers have different needs and they interpret the same advert in different ways. In general functions of advertising to consumers are to amuse, to inform, to misinform, to warn and of course to persuade. In this paper, the function of persuading will be the focus. 2.1.4 Aim ofAdvertising Advertising is not an end but a means to an end and a tool that advertisers can use to reach their goals. Its goal is to persuade or influence some specific groups or people to buy a particular product to satisfy their own needs. However, the fact is that people read newspapers or magazines for their content, not for advertisements. So Cook (2001:222) stated ads often exist on the periphery of receiver attention. So the first task for advertisers is to gain consumers' attention. That is to say, the first and perhaps the most important requirement of an advertisement is that it should attract the audience's attention (Dyer 1982:139) and advertisers should give consumers a reason to prefer a certain brand to others. Once the consumers' attention has been caught, the advert should also hold their attention and it should convince them that the product in advert is in their interest so that their interest can be aroused. In order to hold their attention, the advertisers must convince consumers that the 6 A Pragmatic Approach to Advertising English particular brand has some qualities which will make it superior to other similar brands and make sure their products will satisfy a new need or a need which already exists in consumers or potential consumers, so that their desire to purchase is stimulated. At last they will take action to buy the products. In short, the aims of advertising can be summarized to the AIDA formula: Attract Attention, Arouse Interest, Stimulate Desire and Get Action, which was proposed by E. St. Elmo Lewis in 1898 2 and is still a useful guide to the examination and evaluation advertisements. 2.1.5 Nature ofAdvertising In order to achieve their goals, some messages about products must be communicated and therefore advertising is the communication of information, which has been mentioned in the above definition given by Bovee, C. L. & Arens, W. F. So advertising is a communication process. Advertising can take many forms, audio, visual, verbal etc. The gestures, postures and motions which are non-verbal are certainly often employed in pictures in newspapers or magazines, but it can't be denied that language is indispensable and significant to advertising. In advertising, advertisers communicate with a large number of consumers or potential consumers who are anonymous, which is characteristic of public communication. In this kind of public communication, consumers can only get messages and can't take turns to talk back. So advertising is verbal/non-verbal, public and one-way communication (Vestergaard and Schroder, 1985:14). As advertising is a form of communication, participant, message, code and channel should be involved. In this paper, the participant refers to 'consumer' which is a term for a vast number of readers maybe running into millions, and 'advertiser' which doesn't refer to a single person, but an abstract assemblage of people, like advertisers, manufacturers and copywriters; the message transmitted is about the product; the code in press ads is language and some sort of visual elements; the channels are newspapers and magazines. As discussed in the last part, the objective of advertisers is to make profits from consumers so that consumers are apt to distrust them. Their relationship is that advertisers 2 http://www.intares.net/webstatistik/webstatistik_aida_modell.html 7 A Pragmatic Approach to Advertising English are not trustworthy and the consumers are not trusting (Tanaka K. 1994:40). Consequently as a participant, the advertiser always shuns the use of less pleasant overtones of being a strong persuader and try to make his intentions covert, so some strategies have to be adopted. In a word advertising is covert communication with strong persuasion. 2.2 Review of Literature on Advertising Language Language is the soul of advertising and so far advertising language has received far more attention from the linguists. It is essential to summarize the research work about advertising language, which has been done with the enlightenment of some linguistic theories. 2.2.1 Stylistic approach Leech's English in Advertising: a Linguistic Study of Advertising in Great Britain (1966), can be regarded as a classic and pioneer research work, in which he gives a comprehensive description of the linguistic features employed in advertising language after examining the motives behind advertising language and the advertising backgrounds. He analyzes quantitatively the lexical, syntactical and rhetorical features of advertising language from the perspective of stylistics. He has effectively related these aspects with the advertising aim factors such as attention value, listenability/readability, memorability and selling power. Illustration, display typography, wrong spelling, grammatical solecism, metaphor and paradox are some of the devices linked with attention value. Simple and colloquial style and familiar vocabulary are connected with readability. Phonological regularities such as alliteration, rhythm, rhyme and jingle are related to memorability. Frequent use of imperatives and superlatives are connected with selling power. The distinctive property of advertising language has been closely identified with the use of clauses, phrases and words as minor sentences, which constitute a different kind of grammar called disjunctive grammar. His theoretical insights and quantitative method guide and stimulate other linguists to further study. Especially his work has a pervasive influence in China and many books and a large number of articles about linguistic features of advertising language have emerged, for example, those by Oi Yunfang, Zhaojing and Cuigang. 8 A Pragmatic Approach to Advertising English However, Leech confines his study to the sentence level and explores the level of "what" and "how" with a description of language structures which are superficial. If we want to understand "why" in the real situation, we should probe into the motivation beneath the surface with a different theory. 2.2.2 Semiotic Approach The semiotic approach inclines to concentrate on the messages in advertising communication. Two distinguished scholars in this field are Roland Barthes and Judith Williamson who contribute one work respectively: The Rhetoric of Image (1964) and Decoding Advertisements (1983). They believe in the assumption that communication is achieved by the simple process of encoding and decoding a message. "The Rhetoric of the Image" (1964), provides a conceptual framework for studying word-and-image relations. Barthes poses that there are three kinds of messages in illustrated advertisements: the linguistic message, which consists of the product name and the linguistic commentary, the non-coded iconic message, in which the photograph image similarly denotes the "real" object and has literal message, and the coded iconic or symbolic message, which refers to the picture that forms connotations of the 'image' of the product. It is valuable that Barthes recognizes the double system of codes: the linguistic text and the picture, which work simultaneously and produce connotations in different processes. The main contribution of his research lies in his suggestion that the number of readings of the same lexical unit or the same image varies according to individuals, that is to say, readers can derive different pieces of information from a single advertisement. But his research method is somewhat problematic because the decoding of the connotations relies on the cultural knowledge of the readers and it is likely to yield different interpretations in view of the reader's different cultural backgrounds. Therefore either the linguistic message or the iconic message can't avoid ambiguity and subjectivity as a result of over-emphasis on the connotation of advertising. Judith Williamson proposes the phrase 'decoding Ads' for the first time and she analyzes magazine ads, discussing the signs and symbols in use, and explaining how they work. She doesn't focus on the whole system of advertising for she was only interested in uncovering the mechanisms by which meaning is created in ads. She contends that the 9