A Study Of Pragmatic Vagueness In Cosmetic Advertisement From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

With the rapid development of the society, advertisements, as an essential type of mass media, have enormously changed with time going by. Relying on the beautiful language of cosmetic advertisements, it occupies an important position in the field of advertisements. This thesis mainly adopts Verschueren’s adaptation theory to analyze pragmatic vagueness in cosmetic advertisements. The purpose of this thesis is to make consumers have a better understanding of cosmetic advertisements and promote advertising agencies to create high-quality cosmetic advertisements.Through a large number of investigation and research, Verschueren came to a conclusion that the use of language is not only personal behavior but also social behavior. It can be seen that it has close relationship with cultural, social and cognitive factors. From the integrated perspective of cultural, social and cognitive factors, pragmatics is the summary and understanding of language phenomenon and its usage pattern. Based on the research toward the relevant pragmatic theories, Verschueren brought up the notion of Linguistic Adaptation. The main contents of Linguistic Adaptation Theory are as following:1) the use of language consists in the continuous making of linguistic choices (both in the form of language and communicative strategy)2) the making of choices can be carried out is due to the three features of language-variability, negotiability and adaptability3) the concept of adaptability provides four research aspects of the use of language, including contextual correlates of adaptability, structural objects of adaptability, the dynamics of adaptability and the salience of adaptation process. This thesis mainly adopts Adaptation Theory to analyze pragmatic vagueness in cosmetic advertisements.With the rapid development of the society, cosmetic advertisements have some changes, no matter from neither the choices of language nor the choices of sentence pattern. Based on the analysis of a large number of cosmetic advertisements, it can be seen that pragmatic vagueness usually appears in cosmetic advertisements in order to fulfill advertisers’and manufacturers’ communicative needs. This thesis uses Verscheuren’s adaptation theory as the basic framework and conducts relevant researches towards cosmetic advertisements both at home and abroad. This thesis mainly analyzes and studies the vague functioning of adaptability and variability in cosmetic advertisements. The main research questions are:1) In cosmetic advertisements, what are the linguistic devices to realize pragmatic vagueness?2) How is cosmetic advertising language adapted to different nonlinguistic contextual correlates (i.e. physical world, social world and mental world)?3) What are the functions of pragmatic vagueness in cosmetic advertisements?In order to solve the above questions, the author accumulates and organizes some cosmetic advertisements both at home and abroad and conducts relevant analysis and research. By studying and analyzing those materials, the thesis draws the conclusions as following: In cosmetic advertisements both at home and abroad, cosmetic manufacturers and advertisers usually use punning, numerals, hedging, evaluative adjectives, indirect speech acts and figures of speech to manipulate the language. By using those language forms, pragmatic vagueness can be realized and products can be promoted at the same time. As for the aspect of adaptability in cosmetic advertisements, the author mainly analyzes sample advertisements from mental, social and physical world. It can be inferred that advertisers’need of security, consumers’preference, personality and pursuit of material and non-material interests influence the linguistic adaptation. Meanwhile, culture, custom and social convention and persons present in the speech all have influence towards the process of adaptation in cosmetic advertisements. In the process of producing advertisements, the right use of vagueness can arouse the consumers’interests towards the products and services. Meanwhile, it can facilitate the sales and service. The proper use of pragmatic vagueness can also make advertisers produce more aesthetical advertisements. If pragmatic vagueness is used improperly, it will have negative effects.