A Study On The Pragmatic Failures In Advertising Of Chinese Exports

Advertising is a kind of important social language and social culture. It is something that we are all exposed to and it is likely to affect most of us in different spheres of our lives. Along with the rapid development of Chinese economy, exports advertisement has become an important tool to expand overseas markets. However, because of the distinctions of cultural patterns, customs and cognitive models between China and other English-speaking countries, cross-cultural pragmatic failures usually occur.This thesis mainly studies on print advertisements. According to analyze about 30 pairs of export advertisements, it explores the causes of pragmatic failures and the criterion to judge pragmatic failures. With the help of Thomas'distinction between pragmalinguistic failure and sociopragmatic failure, based on the characteristics of exports advertising, the thesis give a more scientific and detailed criterion to study pragmatic failures. The main causes of pragmalinguistic failure are transference of pragmatic rules, transference of pragmatic meanings and overgeneralization of linguistic materials; and the main causes of sociopragmatic failure are distinction of values, different associative meanings, distinction of religious faiths, use of taboo words and violation of laws of importing countries. This is a more pointed classification in consideration of the characteristics of exports advertisement. It is hoped that this research can supply useful insights to both advertising theorists and practitioners alike.