consideration of the relationship between communicator and receiver. It can also mean to purposely use a type of writing(formal or colloquial ) that is unusual in the given context.
Dialectical deviation means to use dialect in English advertising.
Loanwords, although it doesn’t belong to the category of dialect, has the same function as dialectical deviation. For example:
Perrier…with added je ne sais quoi. (“Perrier” beverage)
The French words “je ne sais quoi” means “I don’t know what”. The point of this advertisement is to indicate the French style of the advertised drink. Both the dialects and loanwords can add local/original culture to the target product.
Last but not least, deviation of historical period refers to the use of language than belongs to a certain age of history. For example: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” gives an classical impression of the Age of Renaissance.
Conclusion
This thesis utilizes Relevance Theory to interpret deviational use of language in advertising and explains why it is such an arresting rhetorical device. It also confirms the applicability of Relevance Theory in English advertising.
It is implied in the above case studies that the Relevance Theory can account for the interpretation of deviational language. According to Relevance Theory, interpreting deviation is a process of an ostensive-inferential communication. In the process of ostension, the communicator (here it refers to advertiser) has an informative intention and an communicative intention. The former means the communicator intends to inform the receivers of certain advertising information and the latter means the communicator wants to have receivers understand his informative intention. Therefore, the communicator designs a stimulus, here it refers to the deviational language, to make his intention mutually manifest in their shared cognitive environment. In the process of inference then, the receiver searches optimal relevance and makes deduction to interpret the communicator’s real intention. Thus, the first question raised in the introductory part of this thesis, how advertisement receivers interpret deviational language, is answered.
As for the second question, the reason for deviation to be so arresting is two-layered: Firstly, the stimulus designed by advertiser guarantees that it is relevant enough for the receivers to make effort to process the information and infer the advertiser’s intention. Secondly, the interpretation of deviation takes receivers more time to process and more efforts of memory and imagination and therefore it may be more impressive.
At the end of this thesis, the author would like to make some suggestions on directions for future studies. It is believed that more evidence is needed to prove two assumptions true. One assumption is that deviation is more arresting than other ways of expression. It can be supported by conducting a large-scale survey. The other assumption is more processing time is able to give rise to a deeper impression. This needs to be backed up by psychological study.
It is the hope of this thesis that by utilizing Relevance Theory to explain the process of interpretation of deviation and why it functions as it does, future adverting design can produce more effective stimulus to better capture and hold the audience’s attention.
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