An Analysis On The Interpretation Of Puns In English Advertisements From A Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Based on Sperber and Wilson's Relevance Theory, this study intends to analyze the interpreting process of puns in advertising, which provides the reasons why puns are widely employed by the advertisers and welcomed by the audience.Since the ultimate goal of commercial advertisement is to persuade consumers to buy the product, thus more importance is attached to the choice of linguistic devices to promote sales. And pun is an important tool frequently used in commercial advertisements to achieve the persuasive effect. Therefore the author selects some typical advertising puns from English magazines and books as examples to analyze the interpreting process of puns in advertisements, adopting the ostensive-inferential communication model proposed by Sperber and Wilson.In terms of the differences among the interpreting process of puns, the author classifies puns into four types to analyze them in detail: 1) Puns with one intended interpretation 2) Puns with rejected interpretation contributing to the intended one 3) Puns with double intended interpretations 4) Parody puns.This analysis shows that the application of Relevance Theory in the interpretation of puns in advertising works well. In advertisements, the advertisers would guarantee that the pun is the optimal relevant stimulus which is worth the audience's attention and processing effort. The audience would reject the initial interpretation of the pun, which is irrelevant to the actual circumstances, and extend their context to pursue the intended interpretation and contextual effects of the advertisement.Furthermore, the extra processing effort involved to solve puns in advertising helps to retain the audience's attention longer and makes the advertisement more memorable. The audience also obtain pleasure and satisfaction from working out the puns, which contribute to their deep impression of the advertisement, and ultimately, of the product advertised. As for the reasons why the advertisers and audience favor puns in advertising, to be more specific, the following pragmatic functions of puns derived from the interpreting process would provide the explanations. They are: 1) Humorous effect 2) Attention-grabbing effect 3) Memory-retaining effect.This study offers some implications for the translation of puns in advertising as well. As the source language advertiser and the target language audience sometimes do not share common cognitive environment, the informative and communicative intentions of the advertiser could only be achieved through translation. The translator should guarantee that the translated version is optimal relevant to the target language audience, that is, it offers adequate contextual effects without demanding the audience for unnecessary processing effort.