语用学论文

in English Advertising

Huang Guoxue

黄国学

Class4, Grade 2008

No. 200805140406

The School of Foreign Languages China West Normal University

A Paper for Pragmatics

June 2012

in English Advertising

Abstract:The ultimate aim of advertising especially commercial advertising is to attract the attention of the customer, raise customer interest by focusing on and demonstrating advantages and benefits, convince customers that they want and desire the product or service and that it will satisfy their needs, and lead customers towards taking action or purchasing. The advertising language is significant to advertising. In order to achieve the purpose of giving publicity to the commodity, advertisers make great efforts to make the advertising language creative and convincing, thus arouses the desire to purchase of consumer. This paper from the pragmatic perspective to explore the intentional violation of cooperation principle (maxim of quantity, maxim of quality,maxim of relation and maxim of manner) in English advertisement, which makes the advertising language unique and original, thus attracts consumers' attention, arouse their desire to purchase, and finally reach the purpose of advertising.

Key word: cooperative principle, advertising language, AIDA, intentional violation

1. Brief introduction:

1.1 Advertising:

Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience (views, readers or listeners) to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common. Advertising messages are usually paid for by sponsors and viewed via various media; including traditional media such as newspapers, magazines, television, radio, outdoor or direct mail; or mew media such as websites and text messages.

1.2 AIDA (marking):

AIDA is an acronym used in marking that describes a common list of events that may be undergone when a person is selling a product or service. The term and approach are attributed to American advertising and sales pioneer, E.ST.Elmo.Lewis.

In 1898 Lewis created his AIDA funnel model on customer studies in the salespeople followed a hierarchical, four layer process using the four cognitive phases that buyers follow when accepting a new ides or purchasing a new product.

(1)A-Attention: attract the attention of the customer.

(2)I-Interest: raise customer interest by focusing on and demonstrating advantages

and benefits (instead of focusing on features, as in traditional advertising). (3)D-Desire: convince customers that they want and desire the product or service

and that it will satisfy their needs.

(4)A-Action: lead customers towards taking action or purchasing.

1.3 Cooperative Principle:

The philosopher Paul Grice propose four conversational maxims that arise from the pragmatics of natural language, The Gricean Maxims are a way to explain the link between utterances and what is understood from them, The Maxims are based on the cooperative principle, which states. Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged, and is so called because listeners and speakers must speak cooperatively and mutually accept one another to be understood in a particular way. The principle describes how effective communication in conversation is achieved in common social situations and its further broken down into the four Maxims of Quantity, Quality, Relevance, Manner.

(1)The maxim of quantity:

a.Make your contribution as informative as is required(for the current

purposes of the exchange).

b.Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.

(2)The maxim of quality:

a.Do not say what you believe to be false.

b.Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

(3)The maxim of relation:

Be relevant.

(4)The maxim of manner: