A Study Of Adaptation To The Audience's Mental World In Flea Market Advertising Language On The Chinese College Web

The thesis is a tentative and empirical investigation on what the advertiser has done to adapt to the audience's mental world in making college online flea market advertisements. The focus is put on the study of flea market advertising language on the Chinese college web directed towards college students. Supported by Verschueren's theory of linguistic adaptation, the author proposes that the college online flea market advertising language generation is the realization of adaptation; the achievement of communicative goals is determined by the advertiser's contextual adaptation. To ascertain what specific contextual correlates the advertiser has to adapt to, a theoretical framework accounting for the active adaptation between the advertiser's choice-making and the audience's mental world is set up according to Yu Guodong's classification on passive adaptation and active adaptation. Using this framework, the analysis is carried out on the continuum between emotional appeal and rational appeal. Emotional appeal and rational appeal are the results of the advertiser's choices on strategies, which are also in accordance with Verschueren's viewpoint that the mental world activated in language use contains emotive and cognitive elements. Under such discussion, negotiable choices are exploited as adaptation to the pursuits of beauty, novelty and fame in the line of emotional appeal; while in the same way, after negotiation linguistic choices are made to adapt to the pursuits of low price, quality and function, and credibility in the field of flea market advertising language on the Chinese college web. Furthermore, it is hoped that the study can make some contribution to a better understanding of college students'life and spiritual states in profile.