顺应论视角下英语广告语言的特征

作者；张美庄学校;桂林理工大学摘要在现代社会中，人们已无法回避广告无处不在的影响。

随着广告业不断迅猛发展，广告与社会生活的关系日益密切。

广告语言绝不是简单的商业用语和语言符号，而是一种运用各种语言技巧的语言。

在经济全球化的今天，广告宣传的国际化趋势越来越明显，各国企业都存在着广告国际化、全球化问题。

在这样的情况下，广告语言必须顺应广告受众的语言语境和交际语境。

所以，本文将从广告的起源和功能入手分析顺应论视角下英语广告的语言特征，包括顺应受众语言的广告语语言特征、顺应受众文化的广告语语言特征以及顺应受众心理这三个方面，并对此分析做出了总结。

关键词：广告顺应论语言特征ABSTRACTIn modern society, the influence of advertising is so strong and widespread that no one can avoid it. With the overwhelming development of advertisement, it is so closely related with social life. The advertising language is not the simple commercial terminology and linguistic notation, but a kind of language that use various of language skills. Under the situation of economic globalization, the internationalization of advertising is becoming more and more obvious. Therefore, the advertising language must be adapted to the audience language and communication context. So this paper will give an analysis to the characteristic of English advertising under the adaption theory. It includes three aspects: adapt the language, culture and psychology of target audience, and gives a conclusion at the end of this paper.KEY WORDS：Advertising Adaptation Theory Language characteristics桂林理工大学本科学年论文CONTENTS1. Introduction (1)2.Advertising (2)2.1The Origin of A dvertising (2)2.2The Definition of A dvertising (3)2.3The Function of English A dvertising (4)3. The Language Characteristic of English A dvertising (4)3.1 Characteristics of Lexicon (4)3.2 Characteristics of Syntax (5)3.3 Characteristics of R hetoric (5)4. The Adaption T heory (5)5. The Characteristics of English Advertising under the Adaption T heory (6)5.1 To Adapt the Language of Target A udience (6)5.2 To Adapt the Culture of Target A udience (7)5.3 To Adapt the Psychology of Target A udience (8)6. Conclusion (8)Bibliography (9)Acknowledgements (10)The Language Characteristics of English Advertising under theAdaption Theory1.IntroductionNowadays, under the situation of economic globalization, the internationalization of advertising is becoming more and more obvious. Therefore, the advertising language must be adapted to the audience language and communication context. The adaptation theory is proposed by Verschueren for pragmatic investigation. It thinks that: in the process of using language, the language choice must be adapted to the communication environment and communication objects.（Jef V erschueren: 2000）Advertising is a communicative action and its ultimate aim is to arouse the interest of consumers, so as to promote the purchase act. When study the characteristics of English advertising under the adaption theory, we can achieve the commercial purpose and the social effect of the advertisements more easily according to the target readers with different language psychologies, cultures and value orientations.2、AdvertisingAdvertising is a form of communication used to encourage or persuade audience (viewers, readers or listeners, sometimes a specific group of people.) to continue or take some new action. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, Advertising messages are usually paid for by sponsors and viewed via various traditional media; including mass media such as newspaper, magazines, television commercial, radio advertisement, outdoor advertising or direct mail; or new media such as blogs and websites and text messages.2.1 The Origin of AdvertisingThe origin of advertising is related to the definition which people give to it. in the book “History of Advertising” which published in 1875.Mr.henry Sampson described the origin of advertising as follows:…… There is little doubt that the desire among tradesmen and merchants to make good their wares has had an existence almost as long as the customs of buying and selling, and it is but natural to suppose that advertisements in some shape or form have existed not only from time immemorial, but almost for all time.（Jef V ers-chueren：2000）For the reason that the spoken language was developed earlier then the written language, so the earliest advertising media must be mouth-to-mouth. The evidence demonstrated that the history of advertising can be traced back to the old Greece, at that time the peddler attracted customs by horn, and they appealed them and sold their products to them. This can be seen as the earliest advertising in the world.In the middle age in Britain, a golden arm that waves hammer represented the goldsmith; in China the signs for things like the signboard for tavern came into being. In the 17th century, with the up surging of European’s industrial revolution, the newspaper pushed a further development for the advertising. Upon the entering of the 20th century and a hundred year after that the media of advertising developed more rapid than ever, from the wireless in 20s to the creation of the television station in1939, advertising made new breakthrough. In modern commercial society the importance of advertisement is as much as its products. The rapid development of information technology in the 20th century has provided new room for allareas. After the commercial use of international website the e-commerce came into being and flourished. With the rapid development as well as the quick spread of the Internet, the e-advertising has developed quickly, and it will become one of the most potential effective and economic means of advertising.2.2、The Definition of AdvertisingThere are various definitions of advertising according to different perspectives or purposes. Encyclopedia Britannica defines advertisement as follows:“Advertising is a form of communication intended to promote the sale of a product or service, to influence public opinion, to gain political support, to advance a particular cause, or to elicit some other response desired by the advertiser. …Advertising is distinguished from other forms of communication in that the advertiser pays the media to deliver the message.”(Encyclopedia Britannica, V olume I, 1994)According to the Definition Committee of American Marketing Association), advertising is defined as follows:“Advertising is the non-personal communication of information usually paid for and usually persuasive in nature about products, services or ideas by identified sponsors through the vario us media.”From the above given definitions, it’s not difficult for us to find that the advertising commonly has follow components:(1)Advertising is directed to groups of people rather than individuals (no personal). The groups of people are the intended or the target audience of the advertisement communication.(2)Most advertising t is paid for by sponsors, except some public service ads.(3)Most advertising is intended to be persuasive —to convince people to buy products or services, but some ads promote the images of enterprises.(4)The sponsor must be identified. It appears as trademark, brand name of products or services, or the name of an enterprise in the advertisement.(5)Advertising reaches us through media.2.3、The Function of English AdvertisingGenerally speaking the advertising has the following listed functions: information function、demand creation function、persuasive function、get action function、goodwill establishment function.（王希燕: 2004）All this functions can be fall into two categories: the economic functions and the ideological functions.The economic role of advertising may be its primary role. It bridges markets, products and consumer goods to the public and thus to support the free economy. It can help the consumers to identify and differentiate products and build brand preference and loyalty.To make an in-depth study, we find that advertising involves social values and attitudes. Nowadays, more and more advertising adopts the style of emotion appeal. They suggest our concerns about relationship, our sense of social status, happiness and contentment and many others. It may be said that advertising is a mirror of ideology and culture. By imposing images on the products and services, advertising can influence our attitudes and feelings and meet our ideological needs so as to persuade us to act. For instance, some advertisers claim that the consumption of their products will give youth, love, social acceptance etc.3、The Language Characteristic of English AdvertisingIn a highly developed society, advertisements have great impact on us almost everywhere. With the further development of globalization, English has become an international language, thus English in advertising has become the focus of everyone’s attention.As a practical language, with its high effectiveness, English in advertising has evolved from common language into an informal professional language. English in advertising differs from common English not only in words but also in its style.With the rapid development of advertising and with the rapid advancement of science and technology as well as social changes，English in advertising has changed a lot. To those who learn and love English, learning the characteristics of English in advertising will improve themselves as well as provide them the chance to enjoy the language art.As a special language, English in advertising has its distinctive characteristics in lexicon, syntax and rhetoric. It differs from common English. In some cases, the final purpose of advertising is to persuade the consumer to buy certain goods or accept certain services. Thus, the language of advertising English pursues a sort of language art, on condition that to master this language art is to get the key to the success of advertising.3.1 Characteristics of LexiconEnglish in advertising and common English contains obvious differences in selecting words. Advertising language, as a medium of disseminating information, aims mainly at attracting the consumer’s attention, it uses the thriftiest words, explains the profound things insimple way, and produces instant results.In order to make consumers easily and effectively accept the advertising information, the English in advertising often be used carefully and skillfully, the characteristics of the language in advertising and the consumer’s psychology need to be considered.3.2 Characteristics of SyntaxAdvertising regards social masses as the subject of consideration, everybody in the society may be the possible consumer. So the sentence in advertisement must be popular, simple and clear. The sentences must catch the consumer’s eyes all at once. Longwinded sentences often make people bored; simple sentences are understandable, powerful, colloquial, cordial and easy to be accepted by consumers. So, simple sentence is the basic characteristic of the sentence in English advertising.3.3 Characteristics of RhetoricRhetoric, in brief, is an instrument that on the basis of purport and context, using various kinds of language materials and expression techniques, expressing all the things being expressed appropriately. Rhetoric is used to study language from the angle of use, it is regarded as a powerful implement for strengthening the effect of language expressing, and it occupies an indispensable position in advertising English.Rhetorical devices in advertising English serves the purpose of the content, it should suit the content and induce the consumer to get into a wonderful world of product. This requests the copywriter to achieve the purpose of attention value and memory value. The copywriter tries to be fanciful in selecting words and making sentences and also tries to produceunconventional creative power.4、The Adaption TheoryAdaptation Theory was established by Jef Verchueren who was the general secretary of International Pragmatics Association in his book Understanding Pragmatics in 2000. It suggests the contextual correlates of adaptability, the structural objects of adaptability and the dynamics of adaptability in linguistic choice. Met pragmatic indicators are a linguistic component that has no effect on the truth value of the utterance but expresses emotional or attitudinal or procedural meanings. They are used for the uttered to construct the text and to help or lead the hearer to the adaptation of the uttered communicative intention.5、The Characteristics of English Advertising Under The Adaption TheoryThe adaption theory provides a new theory frame to the study of language phenomenon .Verchueren thinks that in order to realize the aim of communication, the advertising language must be adapted to the audience language and communication context. Advertising is a communicative action and its ultimate aim is to arouse the interest of consumers, so as to promote the purchase act. Therefore, the advertising language must be adapted to the language, psychology, culture of the target readers with a view so as to achieve the commercial purpose and the social effect of the advertisements.5.1 To Adapt the Language of Target AudienceLanguage has a powerful influence over people and their behavior. This is especially true in the fields of marketing and advertising. The choice of language to convey specific messages with the intention of influencing people is vitally important.Visual content and design in advertising have a very great impact on the consumer, but it is language that helps people to identify a product and remember it.The English language is known for its extensive vocabulary. Where many other languages have only one or two words which carry a particular meaning, English may have five or six.Moreover, the meanings of these five or six words may differ very slightly and in a very subtle way. It is important to understand the connotation of a word. Connotation is the feeling or ideas that are suggested by a word, rather than the actual meaning of the word. Armchair, for example, suggests comfort, whereas chair arouses no particular feelings.The target audience, of course, also puts its own meaning into certain words. Different people sometimes interpret language in different ways.For example, the advertisement word “never late on Father’s Day”, two [ei] make it harmonious. But it is very different to reserve these kinds of music’s beauty in Chinese. Otherwise, the translator should notice some pronunciations which maybe because bad effect in others language. For example, the Toshiba company in Japan once used a advertisement word “东芝(Toshiba), 东芝(Toshiba),大家的东芝(our Toshiba)”. This is advertisement lyric. But some young people use partial tone to translate “偷去吧，偷去吧，大家的东西”. It makes this advertisement in strict. And “Toshiba”becomes “goods”; the impression of “Toshiba”becomes weaker.5.2 To Adapt the Culture of Target AudienceCulture plays an important role in the process of choice-making in communication,especially in cross-culture communication. According to the basic communicating process, cross-culture is indispensible to media. So advertising act as an important form or medium of communication by transmitting the message of products and services as well as culture information to the target audiences.Language is a part of culture, and also is the cultural carrier. It reflects national characters. It not only contains the background of history and culture, but also holds some opinions about life, life-way, and thinking-way. And advertisement word is reflected by culture.The audience of advertisement is consumer. When advertising in a new environment .people must study the consumer behavior in that country. Many factors influence consumer behavior, including cultural background, political views, religious belief, individual preference, age, sex, income, consumption habit and so on. Cultural factors include culture, politics, religion, habit, etc. or they will definitely encounter some difficulties.For example, the English word “dragon” is often associated with fire and portrayed as breathing fire, or else as a creature of that primeval chaos which was to be destroyed only through disciplined marshaling of mental and physical prowess; but its corresponding word “龙”in Chinese is usually understood as a symbol of happiness, capable of producing the potion of immortality (Biedermann, 1989). If “金龙牌”was translated as “Golden Dragon”, it would have negative effect among western community.Another typical example is about the promotion of the “OPIUM” brand fragrance in China. The advertiser’s intention is to appeal consumers through the attraction of opium. Buthe doesn’t know that opium is what Chinese people hate. It associates with invasion and the national humiliation in Chinese historical culture. As a result, the fragrance was violently resisted by Chinese people after it appeared in Chinese market. And later on it was banned from being sold in China for violating Chinese trademark law.So, according to the above given examples, we can learn that if people want their products be accepted by customers successfully, the advertisement language should adapt to the culture of target audience.5.3 To Adapt the Psychology of Target AudienceVerschueren thinks that he psychological world contains personalities, personal feelings, beliefs, intensions, motivations and other cognitive factors. Advertizing can be considered as an art of persuasiveness and encourage. Advertisers should also cater the Psychological word of target audience and satisfied their needs physically or psychologically. Therefore, when launching an advertising campaign , the advertiser should make some adoptions to consumer’s psychological world and motivation to purchase.The Chinese product“轻身减肥片”is a classical case ,its English advertisement was“obesity deducting tablets”at first stage .However, the product did not have a good selling in America because of its translated advertisement in America. In American’s eyes ,this medicine was just fit for “obese people”,which violated the consuming psychology of the buyers. After the name of this changed as “slimming pills”,it enjoyed an expected selling over the whole market.There also an typical case:“满堂红”was an real estate company in China. In the practical promotion activity ,the advertiser made the English advertisement as “my top home”,which was irrelevant to theoriginal version. However, it was proved that the effect of this advertisement was remarkable. All in all the advertiser caught the consumer’s psychological motivations and used “My”to move the audience,“Top”to express the roundness of my own home.“home is an emotional word and full of warmth, harmony ,and love .This diction increased the emotional communications and cordial feelings between and manufacturers. Undoubtedly this advertisement can facilitate the purchase action.6. ConclusionIn the book, “Understanding Pragmatics”Verschueren said:“there is no principled limit to the range of social factors that linguistic choice are interadaptable with. Most of them have to do with properties of social settings or institutions.”（Understanding Pragmatics，2000）It is no doubt that either linguistic factors or cultural factors have to be taken into consideration in drafting English advertisements.Language, image symbols and colors may carry different meanings in different cultures, and people living in different cultures also differ in their pragmatic rules, values, and beliefs and so on. As a result flexible adaption both to linguistic reality and social world is necessary to avoid possible misunderstandings.Bibliography[1] Courland L.Bovee. William F Arens. Contemporary Advertising [M]. U.S.A: Von Hoffman Press, 2000.[2] Grey Myers. Advertising Language Varieties and Its Social Contexts[M]. 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Without her constructive suggestions, patient guidance and kind encouragement, the completion of the paper would not have been possible.I would also show my gratitude to Mr. Hu Jin who gave me the reference book, “Understanding Pragmatics”, and also helped me in the course of this paper writing. My thanks go to all the teachers who have taught me in my study.At the same time, let me thank all my friends, classmates, who have either lectured to me, orencouraged me, or supported me during my four years' study and enjoy my pleasure and share my difficulty in those past days.。