Introduction
Contemporary advertising is ubiquitous in people’s daily life. According to statistics, in the United States , one can be exposed to about 500 advertisements in a single day, 182,000 advertisements per year (Wang J, 6). Therefore, advertising language, as a lively and typical social phenomenon, is targeted in this thesis. In particular, the research focuses on deviational use of language in advertising, the language that departs from normality, in that it prevails in contemporary advertising. To understand how and why such a representative rhetorical device functions can hopefully shed light on the advertising design in the long run.
Different approaches exist in the research of advertising language, among which the author holds the Relevance Theory, proposed by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson, contributes to the explanation of its popularity. Therefore the author endeavors to utilize that theory to interpret the use of deviation in advertising language.
The thesis aims to fulfill two primary tasks.
One effort is to utilize Relevance Theory to explain the process of interpretation of deviation and why it functions as it does. In addition, the thesis serves as an confirmation to the application of Relevance Theory.
The thesis consists of three parts.
The first part defines advertising and deviation. It also introduces different approaches in the study of advertising language, which includes foregrounding theory, defamiliarization theory, economic principle, conversational implicature, advertising as discourse and other rhetorical studies. A literature review of previous studies in China is presented at the end of part one.
The second part describes Relevance Theory. That is a theory which combines linguistics, cognitive psychology and anthropology. Relevance theory holds that the foundation of communication is a mutual cognitive environment and explains the process of ostensive-inferential communication.
The last part deals with real-life cases in categories of deviation. It indicates how deviation performs as ostensive stimulus to stimulate advertising receivers’ behavior of searching for optimal relevance. It also includes reasons for deviation to be such an
arresting rhetorical device.
1.Research background 1.1 Definitions
The word \\attract attention \or \inform” (Duanyao, 33). In present, according to Oxford Advanced Learner’s English—Chinese Dictionary, it is defined by American Marketing Association (AMA) as “the non-personal communication of information usually paid for and usually persuasive in nature about products, services or ideas by identified sponsors through the various media”.
Deviation is the use of language that departs from linguistic norms. By “norm” we mean the rules people obey when utilizing language. For instance, the word “and” never initiates a sentence. Deviation is a intentional violation of normality, which distinguishes itself from misuse of language.
Deviation is a frequently used technique in modern English advertising. It can be divided into different categories, which will be further elaborated on in the third part of this thesis.
1.2 Readings of relevant theories
Various studies concerning advertising language is observed in this section. It includes Mukarovsky’s foregrounding theory, Shklovskij’s defamiliarization theory, Leech’s economic principle, Grice’s conversational implicature, Guy Cook’s view on advertising as discourse and other rhetorical studies.
1.2.1 Foregrounding theory
From the perspective of structuralism, Mukarovsky brought forward the foregrounding theory in Standard Language and Poetic Language in 1964. He holds that for poetry, the standard language is the background against which the esthetically intentional distortion of the linguistic components of the work, in other words, the intentional violation of the norm of the standard is reflected.(Mukarovsky, 1964: 42). He further points out in communication, unlike poetic language, deviation is to attract the reader's (listener's) attention more closely to the subject expressed by the foregrounded
means
of
expression.’(Mukarovsky,
1964:43)
Thus,
the
attention-attracting function of deviation in foregrounding theory can answer the question why deviation gains favor of advertisers.
1.2.2 Defamiliarization theory
“Defamiliarization” is also known as “making strange”, “de-automatization” or “deformation” It is postulated by formalist Victor Shklovskij who makes clear that “the function of art is to make people aware of the world in a fresh way” (Van Peer, 1986: 1). Shklovskij holds that the task of a writer is to counteract the routine of the reader's attachment to clichés, stock responses and automatized perception, by cutting the familiar objects and events out of their habitual context and portraying them as if they were seen for the first time, hence bringing about a heightened awareness of the world. Thus deviational use of advertising language, as part of the “making strange” art, is an application of defamiliarization theory.
1.2.3. Economic Principle
The economic principle, “Be quick and easy”, first appeared in Leech’s book, Principles of Pragmatics(1983: 67-68). He considers Economy Principle as a valuable percept for both the hearer and the speaker due to the reduction of time needed in encoding and decoding. It is favored under the premise of complete transference of original meaning.
Economic Principle stands only in certain forms of deviation. For instance, elisions, abbreviating ,simplifying structure, replacing complicated text with simple illustration , etc.
1.2.4 Conversational implicature
The theory of conversational implicature was originally proposed by Herbert Paul Grice. He claims that “We might formulate a tough general principle which participants will be expected to observe, namely: Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose of direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged. One might label this the COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLE”(Jiang，34)
Cooperative Principle reflects that the participants of a conversation are willing to cooperate and obey the following four maxims.
(1) Quantity
a. Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purpose of the exchange)
b. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required (2) Quality
a. Do not say what you believe to be false
b. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence (3) Relation: Be relevant (4) Manner
a. Avoid obscurity of expression b. Avoid ambiguity c. Be brief d. Be orderly”
This principle is NOT prescriptive, in other words, it doesn’t make up rules for communicators to follow, instead it describes a real conversation where people consciously or subconsciously obey the four maxims.
However, Grice points out that in some cases people intentionally breach the maxims for four possible reasons. The forth reason is related to conversational implicature:”Fourthly, he may FLOUT a maxim; that is, he may BLATANTLY fail to fulfill it. On the assumption that the speaker is able to fulfill the maxim and to do so without violating another maxim (because of a clash), is not opting out, and is not, in view of the blatancy of his performance, trying to mislead, the hearer faced with a minor problem; How can his saying what he did say be reconciled with the supposition that he is observing the overall CP? This situation is one that characteristically gives rise to a conversational implicature; and when a conversational implicature is generated in this way, I say that a maxim is being EXPLOITED.” (Jiang，44) From the perspective of pragmatics, the deviation of language in advertising purposely violates Cooperative Principle and therefore uses its conversation implicature to attract and convince consumers. However, this theory
does not target at explaining the process of attention obtaining.
1.2.5. Advertising as discourse
Discourse( in the sense used in Guy Cook’s book The discourse of advertising) is text and context together, interacting in a way which is perceived as meaningful and unified by the participants (who are both part of the context and observers of it).
The book deals with the materials of ads, texts of ads, participants in advertising communication and tacks problem of evaluating and assessing advertising as a whole. According to Cook (2001),” the purpose of this book is to analyze ads as discourse. Although the main focus of discourse analysis is on language, it is not concerned with language alone, It also examines the context of communication.” He also remarks that :”The purpose of this book is to provide a principled framework for the description and analysis of individual advertisements and of advertising in general.”
However, his book doesn’t examine the process of discourse interpretation , which is expected in this thesis.
1.2.6 Studies on rhetorical devices
Greek thinker Aristotle defines rhetoric as “the art of persuasion”. Deviation is part of this art. Wide range of rhetorical studies exist in advertising language. For instance, the rhetorical study of McQuarrie and Mick (1996) reflected that \rhetorical figure has traditionally been defined as an artful deviation. More formally, a rhetorical figure occurs when an expression deviates from expectation, the expression is not rejected as nonsensical or faulty, the deviation occurs at the level of form rather than content, and the deviation conforms to a template that is invariant across a variety of content and contexts. (Corbett, 1990). That definition of deviation shows rhetorical study is a completely different approach from above mentioned theories.
1.3 Literature review of previous studies in China
A search on the www.cnki.edu.cn, the most prestigious website for the collection of dissertations written by Chinese scholars, reveals the fact that advertising English is a frequently discussed topic in academic circle of China. Nevertheless, when it comes to deviation, a particular rhetorical device used in advertising English, most of the researches focus the two topics: the classification and translation of deviational