Analyzing Commercial Advertisements In Light Of Conceptual Integration Network

Commercial advertisement plays a very important role in modern society, the ultimate aim of which is to persuade the audiences to purchase the products advertised. This paper adopts a cognitive approach to the analysis of commercial advertisement discourse within the framework of Conceptual Integration Theory, trying to disclose how the audiences are involved in the mental cognitive meaning construction.Linguists have shown great interest in advertisement discourse. In the beginning they mainly show their concern on the linguistic features manifested; later, they turn to semiotics, sociolinguistics, pragmatics and systemic-functional linguistics, attaching particular importance to the linguistic strategies intentionally employed by the advertisers. Admittedly they have made great contributions to the study of advertisement discourse, but have failed to take the psychology of the consumers into account. So, how do the audiences interpret advertisements? What cognitive mechanism facilitates their interpretation of the implied meaning? These are the questions we shall look into in this thesis.Advertising, a complicated psychological phenomenon, requires invisible and unconscious mental operations for the interpretation of messages. With the development of cognitive research, we find that Conceptual Integration Theory proposed by Fauconnier and Turner could offer the most exciting possibilities for exploring the hidden cognitive mechanism involved in the interpretation of advertising. Within the framework of Conceptual Integration Theory, the hidden mystery of psychological operations within the consumers' mind is exposed: the mapping of different cognitive fields evokes great imagination and association and then develops the "emergent meanings", which further activates the emotional and psychological needs of the consumers and serves as a driving force for the purchase. On the one hand, the analysis will help the consumers make out what goes on in their mind as they try to interpret the information in the advertisements, and help them make better choices in purchase activities; on the other, it will help the advertisers to understand more about the backstage cognitive processes in the head of the addressees, which in turn will urge them to improve the quality of the ads they come up with. Thus, this study is inspiring and beneficial to both the consumers and advertisers.This thesis is made up of five parts: Chapter One presents a general picture of the current study, including the research object, the significance and the organization of the thesis. Chapter Two is a historical review of the related literature on both advertising and the theoretical researches of advertisement discourse. It provides readers with the definition, classification, generic structure, and functions of advertising, as well as several major linguistic approaches taken towards advertisement discourse analysis. Chapter Three introduces the fundamental theoretical framework of the present study, a general illustration of Conceptual Integration Theory, including its theoretical background and network model (the components of conceptual integration network, the basic processes of blending, and the types of conceptual integration network). Chapter Four is the core of the whole thesis, devoted to bringing the Conceptual Integration Theory into the concrete analysis of commercial advertisement discourse. A case study involving linguistic constructions (semantic composition, syntactic structures, and discourse) and non-linguistic constructions (picture) in the light of the theoretical framework is elaborated. The analysis provides a new and reasonable account for the cognitive mechanism involved in the interpretation of commercial advertisement discourse, which serves as a strong impetus for the activation of purchase desires. Chapter Five is a summary of the analyses, i.e. implications of the present study and suggestions for future researches.