OnPersuasiveFunctionofPragmaticVaguenessinAdvertisingLanguage

1、語用模糊在廣告語言中的勸說功能on persuasive function of pragmatic vagueness in advertising languagecontentsabstract.1key words.1i. introduction.2ii. pragmatic vagueness and advertising language.3iii. theoretical framework of the thesis.41. verschuerens linguistic adaptation theory.42. grices theory of conversation

2、al implicature.63. searles indirect speech acts theory.7iv. analysis of pragmatic vagueness in advertising language.81. defining the notion of linguistic manipulation.82. linguistic manipulation for pragmatic vagueness in advertising language91) linguistic manipulation at phonetic level.92) linguist

3、ic manipulation at lexical level.103) linguistic manipulation at syntactic and discourse level133. functions of pragmatic vagueness in advertising language.161) increasing the attention value and memory value of the advertising language.162) enhancing the flexibility of the advertising language.173)

4、 improving the appropriateness of the advertising language.174) condensing the advertising language.175) creating rhetorical and aesthetical effects.18v. conclusion.18references.18on persuasive function of pragmatic vagueness in advertising languageabstract: advertising is something that we are all

5、exposed to almost every day. it is also something that is likely to affect most of us in a number of different spheres of our lives. advertising takes many forms, but in most of them language is of crucial importance. the wording of advertisements is, in most cases, carefully crafted to meet particu

6、lar ends. sometimes it is intended to inform, but more often, and more importantly, to persuade and influence. in modern society, nobody is immune from advertising. we are affected, more or less, by advertising. it is worth wondering how advertising succeeds in grabbing our attention, arousing our c

7、uriosity and then triggering our action, and how we are influenced and persuaded gradually, unconsciously, but surely. this is just what the thesis tries to explore. distinct from the precious researches on vague language, which are mainly interpretation-oriented, the present thesis has been conduct

8、ed from the angle of language production. it views pragmatic vagueness as a communicative strategy, which is carried out by the manipulation of vague language to achieve certain communicative goals. key words: advertising language; pragmatic vagueness; analysis; function摘 要：廣告無處不在，并且廣告正在影響著我們的生活的方方面

9、面。廣告以很多形式出現(xiàn)，但是最為重要的便是廣告語言。廣告的措辭在很多情況下為了達到一定的目的往往是慎重而詭策的。一般而言，廣告的作用是告知，但更為重要的是勸說與影響。在當今社會中我們無人能夠擺脫廣告的影響。由此對于廣告是如何吸引我們的眼球，激發(fā)我們的好奇心，并最終觸發(fā)我們的行為，無意識的，是很值得研究的。與前人研究不同的是：我們的觸發(fā)點是語言的產(chǎn)生。這種觀點將語用模糊視為一種交際策略，通過語言的駕馭達到其交際的目的。關鍵詞：廣告語言；語用模糊；分析；功能i. introductionadvertising is an important element of our culture becau

10、se it reflects and attempts to change our lifestyles. new cultural trends and fashions are first transmitted to the mass culture through advertisements. without advertising, our newspapers, magazines, radio and television programming would be far different. advertising takes many forms, but in most

11、of them language is of crucial importance. the research on advertising language had been greatly developed in recent years, but surprisingly few studies have been undertaken in vagueness in advertising language. we may believe that the basic percepts of good advertising are simplicity, brevity, accu

12、racy, and precision, and that fuzziness, vagueness, imprecision and ambiguity should be avoided. however, many advertisements, which most people would think of as being good language use, contain a great deal of fuzziness or vagueness. in order to achieve their goals, advertisers exploit various lin

13、guistic devices to attract and hold the attention of audiences. with the development of reform and opening up to, china has been coming into the world economy stream. we have to compete with the international economy. china has to reinforce its economy. advertising, with its increasingly important r

14、ole in todays business world, can be a very effective vehicle, when well employed, for domestic companies to promote their sales and to build their images in the international market. there is an urgent need for the theoretical study of the language of advertising. yet among the researchers studies

15、on advertising few have touched the pragmatic application of vagueness in advertising language. in the present thesis, pragmatic vagueness refers to a communicative strategy, which is carried out by the manipulation of vagueness language to achieve certain communicative goals. vague language permeat

16、es our daily communication. it is also commonplace that it has come “part of our taking-for-granted world.” (channel, 1994:4) the use of language can be divided into two categories: non-motivated and highly motivated. if language producers are not equipped with adequate knowledge or linguistic abili

17、ty concerning the related topics; or it is not necessary for them to observe exactitude, then the vague language adopted by then is counted as non-motivated. while the latter refers to the cases in which language producers do not use vague language casually but rather intentionally.this thesis aims

18、to introduce the theory of vagueness (fuzziness) and to analyze its pragmatic function in advertising language and identify the motives behinds the employment of the vehicle of vagueness. distinct from the precious researches, which are mainly interpretation-oriented, the present thesis has been con

19、ducted from the angle of language production. it views pragmatic vagueness as a communicative strategy, which is carried out by the manipulation of vague language to achieve certain communicative goals. in addition, the newly-born linguistic adaptation theory has been chosen as the leading theory in

20、 constructing the theoretical framework of the present thesis. in line with this theory, the use of vague language is closely related to social, cultural, and even cognitive or psychological factors that influence the communicators. therefore, the present thesis has adopted a dynamic and context-dep

21、endent approach along these dimensions and taken the shape of an addressor-based, addressee-oriented and adaptation-driven exploitation.ii. pragmatic vagueness and advertising languageadvertising is defined by american marketing association as “the non-personal communication of information usually p

22、aid for and usually persuasive in nature about products, services, or ideas by identified sponsors through various media.” (ambler, 1998:501) according to barthes (1984:224), “advertisement is generally made up of the linguist message, the coded iconic message and non-iconic message.” as a communica

23、tive device, advertising has its own specific situation. vestergaard and schroder (1985) make a thorough analysis of the communicative situation of advertising. they propose that in the case of advertising, the addressor is the advertiser; the addressee is the audience; the meaning transmitted is ab

24、out the products or services; the code is language, sound and some sort of visual code; the channel consisted of printed publications or tv media; and the context includes such features as the audiences total situation. in their opinion, advertising is both verbal and non-verbal, public and one-way

25、communication, because advertising involves simultaneous use of language and some other elements like music, color and sound. meanwhile, it is a communicative process in which one communicator addresses to an anonymous public who can not answer her back. thus it is a one-way communication.since the

26、ultimate purpose of advertising is to persuade people to buy the advertised product or service, to attract attention, arouse interest, simulate desire, strengthen memory and get action naturally becomes the basic aidma principle in advertisement making (amble, 1998). as the main carrier of advertise

27、ment information, advertising language is then of vital importance in this aidma process. besides as for the function of pragmatic vagueness, he ziran (he ziran，1990) sketches out its positive role and holds that pragmatic vagueness can make utterances more appropriate and more tactful in certain co

28、ntexts. similarly, thomas (1995:143) also generalizes some functions of pragmatic vagueness (which is termed as indirectness by thomas) as follows“making ones language more/less interesting, increasing the force of ones message, handling competing goals, and being polite or face-saving”. in addition

29、, leech (1983:2324) maintains that “by leaving force unclear, s(peaker) may leave h(earer) the opportunity to choose between one force and another, and thus leaves part of the responsibility of the meaning to h(earer)”. and channell (1994:194) also provides the following functions“giving the right a

30、mount of information, deliberately withholding information, using language persuasively and self-protection”. therefore, pragmatic vagueness is one of the strategies frequently resorted to by advertisers to increase the attention value, memory value and persuasive power in the finite time and space

31、to the max. on the other hand, pragmatic vagueness can also enhance the flexibility, improve the appropriateness, condense the information, and create special communicative effects of an advertisement.iii. theoretical framework of the thesisthis part will present a brief introduction to the relevant

32、 theories so as to provide a theoretical support for the exploration of the pragmatic vagueness in advertising. different theories have their distinctive strong points and weak points. therefore, in the present thesis three major pragmatic theories are supposed to construct the theoretical framework

33、 for our analysis of the pragmatic vagueness in advertising language. to be exact, they are verschuerens linguistic adaptation theory (lat for short), grices theory of conversational implicature and searles indirect speech act theory. however, these three theories play different roles in the present

34、 thesis. verschuerens linguistic adaptation theory is the backbone of the theoretical framework. the problems that the present thesis seeks to approach are dug out and settled with the enlightenment of this theory. while the other two theories mainly serve as the theoretical support when the detaile

35、d analyses are made pertaining to the concrete functioning of pragmatic vagueness in advertising language. 1. verschuerens linguistic adaptation theory the theory is initiated, developed, and finally put forward by j. verschueren, the secretary general of the international pragmatic association (ipr

36、a). according to verschuren (1999:6-7), “l(fā)inguistic pragmatics studies peoples use of language, a form of behavior or social action.” since language use is a form of social action, it must have a close relationship with cognitive, social and culture factors in human life. hence, when the full comple

37、xity of linguistic behavior is scrutinized, neither society and culture nor cognitive should be ignored.on the basis of his above insights, verschueren advocates that pragmatics ought to be a general functional perspective instead of a component of linguistic theory, thus involve all sorts of social

38、, cultural, and cognitive variables whenever a linguistic phenomenon is studied from this angle. and the investigation topic of pragmatics is the meaningful functioning of language in actual use, as a complex form of behavior (or social action) that generates meaning. verschueren (1997:7) further de

39、fines pragmatics as “a general cognitive, social, and cultural perspective on linguistic phenomenon in relation to their usage in forms of behavior.”enlightened by evolutionary epistemology, verschueren holds the opinion that “using language must consist of the continuous making of linguistic choice

40、s, consciously or unconsciously, for language-internal (i.e. structural) and /or language external reasons.” (verschuren, 1999:5556) “l(fā)anguage is not a thing that leads an independent and unchanging life once it has been made. it requires constant adaptations to different purposes and circumstances

41、of use.” (verschueren, 1987:18) during the dynamic process of adjusting to its surroundings, language is constantly selected and sifted out. in short terms, as giles and powesland (1975:114) have pointed out, “l(fā)inguistic interaction can most be fruitfully be viewed as a process of decision-making, i

42、n which speakers select from a range of possible expressions”. as is generally acknowledged, the same meaning may be expressed by diversified linguistic forms; on the other hand, the same linguistic form may also be interpreted in different ways due to the changing contextual factors. therefore, for

43、 the purpose of successful communication, people are actually opting for appropriate language forms continuously to achieve their communicative needs. the power of the linguistic adaptation theory is mainly displayed by its proposal of the general functional or pragmatic (i.e. cognitive, social, and

44、 cultural) perspective for linguistic study and its revelation of the inner-adaptive character between linguistic structure and the context in which the former is used. the pragmatic perspective on language use may be conceived as “the study of the mechanisms and motivations behinds any of the choic

45、es made when using language (at any level of linguistic structure and in whatever contextual backgrounds) and the effects they have or are intended to have.”(verschueren, 1987:36) or phrasing it briefly, any research approached from the pragmatic perspective tries to find an answer to the question “

46、what do people do when they using language?” the deliberate use of vague advertising language is from the perspective of language production. it tires to dig out the mechanism involved in the production of vague advertising language, and probe into the rules and effects of the use of vague language

47、in advertising. according to the forgoing illustration, linguistic choices originate from the language produces communicative needs, which prompt motivation in her mind. in order to realize the motivation, the language producer has to opt for an appropriate communicative strategy. once the strategy

48、is chosen, linguistic forms or structures are needed to put the strategy into action. in the process of carrying out the strategy, some contextual correlates are adapted to by linguistic structures and the functions of the strategy are performed in the meantime. therefore, the general functional per

49、spective on language use enables us to explore the research object in question from the cognitive, social, and cultural angels and conduct a rather dynamic research on the intentional use of vague advertising language.2. grices theory of conversational implicaturegrices theory of conversational impl

50、icature is very familiar to those who are done pragmatics because it is one of the classical theories on pragmatics. but before we review it, it is worth our while to touch upon another important theory of his-co-operative principle (cp for short). the well-known co-operative principle and its maxim

51、s “specify what participants have to do in order to converse in a maximally efficient, rational, co-operative way: they should speak sincerely, relevantly, and clearly, while providing sufficient information” (levinson, 1983:101-102). however, in reality, this is only an ideal state of human verbal

52、interaction because the maxims are not always followed. instead, they are frequently flouted for various reasons in our daily communication. fortunately, grice is aware of this and thus put forward the concepts of “conversational implicature” which is used to indicate the “inferred meaning; typicall

53、y with a different logical (i.e. non-truth-preserving) form from that of the original utterance.” (grundy, 2000: 273) in less technical terms, “implicature” refers to any meaning that is implied, i.e., conveyed indirectly or through hints, and understood implicitly without ever being explicitly stat

54、ed (grundy, 2000). if considered from the viewpoint of vagueness, any expression that has implied meaning must be vague in a sense.according to grices theory, the hearer interprets not only the logical meaning of what has been “said” but also the speakers communicative intentions. the hearer must th

55、en assumes that there is a meaning supplementary to the literal meaning of what the speaker says, which is implicature, when the hearer senses that the speaker is reluctant to be cooperative superficially. in turn, the speaker, by obviously violating one of the maxims, can compel the hearer to draw

56、a series of inferences. an important characteristic of implicature is that the hearer is able to account for the implicature in a rational way, provided that she is armed with enough contextual information. but the point here is that an expression with one meaning may evoke different implicatures in

57、 different contexts. from the perspective of language production, this is just the reason why the speaker may strategically breach some maxims of cp and make use of conversational implicature to shift the responsibility of inference to the hearer in the hope of reach certain communicative goals.sinc

58、e our main concern in the present thesis is not the inferring process in which implicatures are obtained, but rather how to produce vague language by means of violating cp and generating implicatures on purpose, then the value of grices theory here is that it may serve as an explanation for the manipulative use of language involved in the communicative strategy of pra