The Use of Ambiguity in Advertising开题报告

 2022-07-13 15:38:15

1. 研究目的与意义

Advertising is one kind of art and advertising language is more like the art of arts. The ambiguity in advertising language is particularly worth extensive attention for the great influences it brings to the aims of advertising. Ambiguity abounds in every language in the world. It refers to a word or an expression that can be interpreted in two or more than two ways. Though it may lead to misunderstandings in our daily communication, it is extremely favored in the advertising world. As advertising is a commercial activity, to spend the least but to achieve the most is what advertisers pursue. To stand out in the ocean of ads, advertisers exhaust their wits by employing various techniques, including ambiguity. This thesis intends to give a systematic analysis of the nature of ambiguity and advertising. Meanwhile, it tries to find out why ambiguity is so widely employed in English ads by expounding its pragmatic foundations. As an advertisement creator, caring more about consumers#8217; understanding about the ambiguity in advertising language can help them come up with more popular and communicable advertisements. For the consumers or audiences of the advertisements, grasping how to understand different implications in advertising language can guide them to do better in consumption activities and then choose more suitable goods. In a time with rich material life, the great use of ambiguity in advertising can provide people with spiritual comfort. However, research in this way has not been very mature. This paper tries to analyze from this aspect, in a bid to contribute a little to the study of advertising language.

2. 研究内容和预期目标

The ambiguity phenomenon is becoming more and more common in advertising language, and this paper is concentrated on the effects it has achieved. The thesis plans to contain the following main contents: definition, characteristics and types of ambiguity and advertisements respectively, the functions of ambiguity in advertisement, a review of theoretical supporting of analyzing ambiguity in English advertisement, the using of pragmatic ambiguity in English advertisements, and suggestions and limitations.

3. 国内外研究现状

Ideally, people, when communicate with each other, are intending to pursue the accuracy of language. However, the property of language itself determined the universal phenomenon of ambiguity existing in people''''''''s daily communication. In fact, ambiguity is one of the basic characteristics of language. It may occur on every language and on every linguistic level. As a universal linguistic phenomenon, ambiguity plays a very important role in our daily life. Its study can be traced back to the period as early as Plato and his student Aristotle''''''''s time. Thereafter, different disciplines and schools have made their studies out of different purposes from various perspectives. The application of ambiguity in advertisements is also extensive. The uncertainty of the extension of ambiguous words endowed advertisers with a free space to bring into play, to better promote their products, leave room for customers to think, to attract more customers and ultimately achieve the fundamental purpose of advertising. Advertisers are fond of employing ambiguity in advertising just because it is more economical, less offensive than saying something directly. Nowadays, advertising language is one of the most active and influential parts in people''''''''s daily communication. As specific carrier of advertisements, it is a true reflection of our society and plays a very important role in realizing the goal of advertising. McQuarrie and Mick (1992) once said that due to its special property, ambiguity is employed with greater frequency in headlines than almost any other language devices. They hold that ambiguity will lead to implicatures which are favorable to the product advertised. Actually, ambiguity in English advertisements has already aroused great curiosity of many linguists. They have, based on different theories, and conducted relevant research from various perspectives such as: Leech''''''''s research from stylistic approach, Roland Barthes and Judith Williamson''''''''s research conducted from semiotic Guy Cook''''''''s research from the perspective of discourse analysis, Vestegaard and Schrodder''''''''s sociolinguistic approach, together with Geis'''''''' Gricean Approach and Keiko Tanaka''''''''s research from Relevance Theory, to name just a few. The deficiency of the previous research, however, is that ambiguity and advertisement are mainly studied respectively, and that only a few combine these two topics and make an interdisciplinary study, let along the research of ambiguity from pragmatic perspective. Moreover, the previous research seldom takes into account the role of the context in which the ambiguous occur in advertisement. The context, however, plays a decisive role in making sense of these advertisements. In fact, there are lots of linguistic features in advertising language that are quite hard to explain within other theories. Based on this, pragmatic approach is adopted in this thesis to study the use of pragmatic ambiguity in English advertisements to see whether it can fulfill the task and try to prove again that pragmatic ambiguity is one of the powerful devices to meet the ends of advertisement.

4. 计划与进度安排

1. Introduction 2. Literal review 2.1 Literature Review on Ambiguity 2.2Literature Review on Advertising Language 3. Ambiguity and Advertisement. 3.1 Definition, feature and classification of Ambiguity 3.1.1 Definition of Ambiguity 3.1.2 Differences Between Ambiguity and Vagueness 3.1.3 Classification of ambiguity 3.2 Definition, Feature and Classification of Advertising 3.2.1 Definition of Advertising 3.2.2 Ubiquity of Advertising 3.2.3Classification of Advertising English 4. Features of Ambiguity in Advertisement Language 4.1 Lexical Ambiguity and Structural Ambiguity in English Advertisement 4.2 Ambiguous advertisements with nonsensical initial meaning 4.3 Ambiguous advertisement and context 5. Functions of Ambiguity in Advertisement 5.1 Self-protection 5.2 Avoidance of conflicts 5.3 Realization of purposes 5.4 Fulfillment of tasks 5.5 Rhetoric functions of pragmatic ambiguity in terms of relevance theory 5.6 Achievement of politeness 6. Conclusion

5. 参考文献

1. Austin, J. L. How to Do Things with Words [M] Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2002. 2. Channell, J. Vague Language [M] Shanghai: Foreign Language Education Press, 2000. 3. Cook, G. The Discourse of Advertising [M] London: T J Press Ltd. 1996. 4. Leech, G English in Advertising: A Linguistic Study of Advertising in Great Britain [M] London: Longman, 1966. 5. Sperber, D.amp;Wilson, D.Relevance: Communication and Cognition [M] Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press. 1986, 2001. 6. Sutherland, Max amp; Sylvester, Alice K. Advertising and the Mind of the Consumer [M]London: Kogan Page Ltd. (2000). 7. Williamson, J. Advertisements; Ideology and Meaning in Advertising [M] London: Boyars. 1978. 8. Yule,G Pragmatics [M]Shanghai:Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2000. 9. 范亚刚.《广告语言与信息》[M]北京:军事译文出版社，2000. 10. 何兆熊.《新编语用学概要》[M]上海:上海外语教育出版社，2000. 11. 黄国文.《语篇分析的理论与实践:广告语篇研究》[M]上海外语教育出版社，2001. 12. 林汝昌，李曼环.《语义学入门》[M]华中理工大学出版社，1993. 13. 伍谦光《语义学导论》[M]长沙:湖南教育出版社，1988. 14. 吴铁平《模糊语言学》[M]上海外语教育出版社，1999. 15. 项成东《歧义的语用研究》[J]外语教学，2002 (04) . 16. 王希杰.《修辞学新论》[M]北京:北京语言学院出版社，1993.

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