A Dynamic Adaptation Study Of Pragmatic Fuzziness In Advertising English

As an important means of communication in the information age, advertising has infiltrated every corner of social life and influences our consumption concept, life outlook and value greatly. Therefore, the research of advertising language has become a hot research topic. Language is the most important carrier of information in an advertisement. Through long-term development, advertising language has become an independent style and a key component of language use. In recent years, fuzziness of language use, which is also extensively present in the advertisement, has stimulated wide attention of linguists, because this kind of language can meet the communicative needs of advertising language and make advertising language more attractive. In its essence, the use of fuzzy language is a pragmatic issue, i.e., pragmatic fuzziness, a communicative strategy language user employ to achieve a communicative purpose by the intentional use of fuzzy language. So a study of advertising pragmatic fuzziness from the pragmatic viewpoint is the key to effective writing and comprehension of advertising language.Proposed by the Belgian pragmatist Verschueren, Adaptation Theory was explained systematically and comprehensively in his book Understanding Pragmatics. In his view, the use of language is the selection process made by the speakers and hearers,"a constant language selection process, whether intentional or unintentional, and governed by extra-linguistic and intra-linguistic factors."Here, extra-linguistic and intra-linguistic factors refer to such contextual factors as the physical world, the social world and psychological factors while"governed by the use of language"refers to the choice of language arises from the adaptation to contextual factors and communicative purposes. According to Verschueren, adaptability is the property of language which enables human beings to make negotiable linguistic choices from a variable range of possibilities in such a way as to approach points of satisfaction for communicative needs. Adaptability can be reckoned as the starting point of four angles of investigation, i.e. contextual correlates of adaptability, structural objects of adaptability, dynamics of adaptability and salience of the adaptation processes. According to the adaptation theory, the use of language is an ongoing process of selection, and choice of language, which can occur at any level, includes the choice of language forms and communicative strategies. The choice of language use must adapt to the communicative environment dynamically, thus making communication proceed smoothly. Therefore, this thesis aims at exploring pragmatic fuzziness in English advertisement by virtue of dynamic adaptation. As a result, we assume that the dynamic adaptation theory, a different viewpoint from the previous research, can explore pragmatic fuzziness in advertising English effectively. By dynamic adaptation we mean a dynamic process where language structure and context abide by each other in the process of language selection. That is to say, it is a dynamic process of mutual adaptation between the two.First, the paper emphasizes that pragmatic fuzziness can be reflected in the structural level. We conduct this analysis from three main dimensions of the language system: sound level (homonymy, polysemy), word level (verb, adjective and adverb) and fuzzy rhetoric level. Once again, Verschueren assumed that the dynamic contextual adaptation represents the core of language use, since any language in use will dynamically conform to the context. This research discusses the contextual adaptation of pragmatic fuzziness, comprising three worlds: the mental world, physical world, social world. Lastly, because the ultimate purpose of the dynamic mutual adaptation between context and structure process is to yield the adaptation functions, we investigate the application of pragmatic fuzziness in advertising English.From the practicability of dynamic adaptation and through the classification and discussion of pragmatic fuzziness in advertising English we find that pragmatic fuzziness play a key role at different levels. For instance, pragmatic fuzziness at the sound level helps stimulate the imagination of consumers and leaves a deep impression on the advertisement. In addition, fuzzy rhetoric can be economic and may save cost for advertisers. If advertisers can adapt to the specific communicative context dynamically and make proper use of fuzzy language, they will be able to realize effective communication and achieve the best returns. Furthermore pragmatic fuzziness can have other functions, such as enhancing flexibility, vividly, and accuracy in advertising and produce aesthetic effects.From the practicability of dynamic adaptation and through the classification and discussion of pragmatic fuzziness in advertising English our thesis supports the communicative context and grammatical structures'positive interaction and summarizes the actual use of different advertising fuzzy languages in corresponding communicative contexts of fuzzy language in different advertisements. In addition we also demonstrate the social-cultural environment and level of consciousness where the different fuzziness meaning in advertising English is generated dynamically. In specific communicative contexts, whether it is the psychological world, the social world or the physical world, advertisers can have the option of using fuzzy language and create a different and effective message transmission. It is the dynamic adaptability of language that makes this choice possible.The purpose of this thesis is to draw our attention to the application of fuzziness in advertisement and make advertisement producers make better use of advertising fuzziness to produce a higher level of advertisement, therefore not only helping advertisers to reach the goal of improving ad-making skills but also increasing consumers'discriminating ability of advertisement. This thesis makes a dynamic study of pragmatic fuzziness by placing it into the practical application of English advertisement. Therefore it can contribute to our grasp of the use regularity and working mechanism of pragmatic fuzziness in English advertisement, help us to grasp sound, lexical, and syntactic features of English advertisement the whole, and facilitate us in clarifying the socio-cultural setting relevant to pragmatic fuzziness in English advertisement.These studies could break through the limitations of a static study and by the dynamic examination of syntactic structures in practical application it is expected that pragmatic applications and pragmatic rules of various syntactic structures can be probed with the intention of providing positive guidance effectively language communication.