从言语行为理论看汽车广告语的取效性【毕业论文】.doc

1、 本科毕业论文 （ 20 届） 英语 从言语行为理论看汽车广告语的取效性 On Perlocutionary Effect of Auto Advertising Language from Speech Act Theory 诚 信 声 明 我声明，所呈交的论文 (设计 )是本人在老师指导下进行的研究工作及取得的研究成果。据我查证，除了文中特别加以标注和致谢的地方外，论文 (设计 )中不包含其他人已经发表或撰写过的研究成果，也不包含为获得 或其他教育机构的学位或证书而使用过的材料 。我承诺，论文 (设计 )中的所有内容均真实、可信。 论文 (设计 )作者签名： 签名日期： 年 月 日 授 权

2、 声 明 学校有权保留送交论文（设计）的原件，允许论文（设计）被查阅和借阅，学校可以公布论文（设计）的全部或部分内容，可以影印、缩印或其他复制手段保存论文（设计），学校必须严格按照授权对论文 (设计 )进行处理，不得超越授权对论文（设计）进行任意处置。 论文 (设计 )作者签名： 签名日期： 年 月 日 I 摘要 广告语作为人类语言的重要组成部分，是语言中最为活跃，最具影响力的有效成分， 它带有时代烙印，能反映出社会的方方面面。目前 ， 作为当代语用学中心话题之一的言语行为理论是哲学家和语言学家普遍研究的课题。鉴于 越来越多的 学者 积极关注广告语的独特性及言语行为理论的应用性， 本文 以言语

3、行为理论为理论框架 ，通过归纳总结汽车广告语中语言运用的手段，探讨语言形式与所要达到的语言效果之间的联系。 关键词： 广告语；言语行为理论；取效性；语用策略 II Abstract As an important component of human language, advertising language is the most active and influential one with the features of times and reflects all aspects of the society. At the same time, being a central to

4、pic of pragmatics, Speech Act Theory is universally researched by philosophers and linguists. Given the phenomenon that an increasing number of researchers pay close attention to the uniqueness of advertising language and the application of Speech Act Theory, based on Speech Act Theory, this paper s

5、ummarizes the means of language used in automobile advertisement to discuss the relations between language forms and expected effects. Key words: advertising language（ AL） ; Speech Act Theory; perlocutionary effect; pragmatic strategies III Contents Abstract . . 1 Introduction .1 2 Literature review

6、 .1 2.1 Review of literature on advertising language .1 2.2 Review of literature on Speech Act Theory .2 2.3 Previous studies .3 3 Application of Speech Act Theory to the analysis of advertising language .4 3.1 Perlocutionary effects of advertising language achievevd .5 3.2 Reasons causing the failu

7、re of perlocutionary effect in advertising language .7 3.2.1 Defects of the expression .7 3.2.2 Use of rhetorical speech.8 4 Strategies of using the advertising language efficiently .9 4.1 Use of speech act verbs .9 4.2 Increasing of illocutionary force .9 4.3 Use of context .10 5 Conclusion . 11 Bi

8、bliography .13 Acknowledgements .15 1 1 Introduction Advertisement has become an important tool for cultural exchange and social communication in modern society. It is well known to us that advertising language is the soul of an advertisement and will determine the success of the advertisement. Adve

9、rtising language is a language to be persuasive, so its ultimate goal is delivering product or service information to create potential purchases. David Ogilvy, the father of advertising, said that words will be vivid in advertising which reflects the importance of the advertising language to an adve

10、rtisement (Quoted from Zhou Fengxuan, 2005). Therefore, language can be a good interpretation of the advertisers intention and become a means of promotion. Due to the vital position of language in advertising, great interest had been aroused in academic field such as business, psychology, sociology

11、and linguistics. However, the drawback is that the research usually focuses on the theoretical study. With the proposal of Speech Act Theory, progress has been made. Speech Act Theory was firstly put forward by Austin and then achieved a further development by Searle. Austin believed that the unit o

12、f language communication was not a sentence, but the speech act carried out by the sentence (Quoted from Zhou Fengxuan, 2005).Searle thought that each sentence had a certain potential illocutionary force which was an integral part of the sentence. Each meaningful sentence can depend on its meaning t

13、o implement a particular speech act (Quoted from Zhou Fengxuan, 2005).Advertising language and common language are similar in features and functions. In order to achieve the perlocutionary effect of advertising, strategies must be taken into consideration. These strategies include the linguistic kno

14、wledge and nonlinguistic knowledge. Therefore, how to make use of speech act theory to study advertising language is practical significance. 2 Literature review 2.1 Review of literature on advertising language Advertising language is a term often used to describe a register related to sales promotio

15、n. According to Peter Trudgill, “the wording of advertisements is, in most cases, carefully catered to meet particular ends. Sometimes it is intended to inform, but more often, and more importantly, to persuade and influence ”(Quoted from Liang Ronghua, 2003) His point of view is echoed and specifie

16、d in Geiss definition: 2 “The language of advertising is language that is used in efforts to persuade or otherwise entice people to purchase products or services.” (1994： 42) Thus, advertising language is a vehicle of message loaded with persuasive intentions for sales promotion and other communicat

17、ive purposes. It can be easily realized that advertising language has played a key role in advertisement. So far the study on advertising language has been approached from three main perspectives. The semiotic approaches tend to focus on the simple process of encoding and decoding a message in adver

18、tising communication. Barthes (1977) put forward his opinion that the decoding of the connotations depends on the cultural knowledge of the viewers, which will yield different interpretations in light of the viewers different cultural backgrounds. From linguistic aspect, Leech (1966) focuses on char

19、acteristic features and situations of advertising language but neglects pragmatics and discourse analysis in his English in Advertising: a Linguistic Study of Advertising in Great Britain. Vestergaard and Schroders The language of Advertising (1985) has discussed both the linguistic forms and conten

20、ts in print advertising. However, communication is successful not when the audience recognizes the linguistic meaning of the utterance, but when he infers the speakers “meaning” for it. Content analysis is considered the most significant communicative approach towards advertising. The representative

21、 researchers are Resnik and Stem who analyzed the information content in television commercials. They developed fourteen information cues in advertising like price, value, quality etc. which are on the surface level of the messages (Quoted from Yu Xi, 2008). That is, content analysis is stranded at

22、the denotative level, as it is mute about the audience interpretation. Although different approaches have various limitations, this does not mean they are of minor importance. Instead, they focus on different parts of the total phenomenon that form a comparatively perfect research system of advertis

23、ing language and make tremendous progresses. 2.2 Review of literature on Speech Act Theory Speech Act Theory is the first main theory in pragmatics which was firstly proposed by British philosopher John Austin in the late 1950s. Philosophers of logical positivism focus their interest on the truth-va

24、lue of sentences. Austin expresses doubts 3 about this assumption because he finds that some statements are not used to state or describe, and they could not be judged as true or false, rather they are used by the speaker to do something. Thus he makes a distinction between what he calls “constative

25、s” and “performatives”. Constatives are statements that either state or describe, and they have the property of being either truth or false. Performatives, by contrast, have no truth-Value; they are used to do something. Later on, Austin stated in his book How to Do Things with Words that speech is

26、the specific application of language in specific situations, that is, saying something is itself a kind of act. In the light of his theory, by saying some thing, a speaker can perform three kinds of act at the same time, i.e. locutionary act, illocutionary act and perlocutionary act (Austin, 2002) A

27、 locutionary act is the act of uttering words or sentences by the movement of our vocal organs. The illocutionary act is that by saying something was performing some acts to show the speakers purpose in producing it. A perlocutionary act means the effect or the consequence by saying something. Searl

28、e selectively inherited and carried forward Austins Speech Act Theory. His main idea is that the basic or minimal unit of linguistic communication is not the symbol, that is, word or sentence, or even the token of the symbol (Searle, 2001). It is the speech act which is the production or issuance of

29、 the symbol or word or sentence under certain conditions in the performance of the speech act. Searle also places much emphasis on the distinctions between the speech acts. In his Speech Acts, he divides speech acts into 4 categories: utterance act, propositional act, illocutionary act, perlocutiona

30、ry act. He classified illocutionary acts into five categories: assertives, directives, commissives, expressives and declarations. The most striking achievement is the presentation of Indirect Speech Acts which means an indirect relationship between the structure of the sentence and the function of t

31、he sentence. 2.3 Previous studies Owing to the sound effects of advertising language in our daily life and the popularity of Speech Act Theory, more and more attention are paid to the study of them at home and abroad. Judith Williamson (1983) believed that context was the most important factor in th

32、e research of advertising language. An appropriate connection with hearer is necessary for the successful understanding of advertisement. He treated advertising language as speech act and claimed that only subject to certain conditions can the effects of advertising be achieved. Pateman (1983) also

33、pointed out that ads would not 4 be meaningful until they are placed in the involved context. The hearers language system, the intentions of speakers, the principles of conversation, the form of speech act and the purpose of the special form of communication have great influence on comprehension of

34、advertising. Zhou Fengxuan (2005) explores the pragmatic principle and features on the basis of Speech Act Theory. Wang Yong and Wang Xiaoxiang (2005) present their ideas that speech act is not a bilateral act of the speaker, but a one-way act with the hearer under the social circumstance. With comp

35、lex characteristics, perlocutionary act should be studied from psychological and physiological aspects of speaker and hearer in communication. Whats more, it should make a close connection between expressing and reasoning. From the perspective of speakers, communication is an expressive process, but

36、 a reasoning process for hearers. Liu Fangqiong (2010) advances that most advertisements take a circuitous way to indirectly express real advertising intention to the hearer. These ways include the use of speech act verbs, elliptical and interrogative sentences and rhetoric means. He Qianjing (2009)

37、 focuses on discussing the direct and indirect strategies to introduce products and persuade customers to purchase from Speech Act Theory. In this paper, advertising language will not be seen as a symbol of language but as a speech act. Under the guidance of Speech Act Theory, we will obtain a furth

38、er understanding of perlocutionary effect in advertising language and reasons causing its failure. However, the analysis will not simply base on theory but on the actual effects made by advertising language to understand pragmatic function. Whats more, it will focus on the strategies used in adverti

39、sing from speakers point of view as well as the commercial appeals. 3 Application of Speech Act Theory to the analysis of AL It is well known to us that two main functions of advertising are informing and persuading. Also it is a common phenomenon that more and more people tend to ignore it because

40、of its unattractiveness and untargeted objects. Therefore, the effects of many ads are not obvious. In Austins theory, he had enlightened the perlocutionary act which deals with the effect of an utterance beyond the concern about truth or falsity of sentences meaning, and recognized that there can be a variety of perlocutionary effects upon the hearer according to various factors. Searle also hold the similar statement. Thus, the Speech Act Theory may be a good explanation for the