Analysis On The Application Of Metaphors In Chinese Advertisements---based On Relevance Theory

In modern society, advertising has become an important communication due to the development of market economy. Advertisers achieve the advertising effect by employing all sorts of linguistic devices, in which metaphor is one of them.Advertising slogan is a special kind of linguistic form in human’s verbal communication, namely, the communication activity between the advertiser and the target audience. It is regarded as an ostensive-inferential cognitive process, including informative intention and communicative intention. Metaphor in advertisement can express more implication with fewer words. It not only attracts audience’s. attention, but also delivers commercial intention in a distinctive language form, then provokes the potential audience’s desire to purchase, finally achieves seller’s purpose of promotion and sale.Optimal relevance and ostensive-inferential model in Relevance Theory can interpret metaphor in advertisement, and then find the linguistic characteristics of metaphor in advertisement. On the one hand, it offers the theoretical basement for our further understanding, and the use of metaphor, on the other hand, it provides the theoretical foundation for our understanding, and production of advertisement. Relevance Theory was put forward by French scholar Dan Sperber and British scholar Deirdre Wilson in their book Relevance:Communication and Cognition in1986. First of all, Relevance Theory regards communication as a kind of cognitive activity; metaphor in advertisement as a verbal communication behavior is also cognitive, thus optimal relevance and ostensive-inferential model in Relevance Theory can interpret metaphor in advertisement. Secondly, a dynamic approach to metaphor understanding is a new one from the perspective of relevance theory, it concentrates on explaining the process of metaphor understanding, and the inference in this process is automatic, unconscious, and spontaneous, and people tend to obtain the optimal communicative effects by the minimum effort. In addition, Relevance Theory involves far-ranging theoretical knowledge, including contemporary cognitive science, linguistic philosophy, human behavior science and psychology.Therefore this thesis analyzes the metaphor in advertisements of foods and beverage, clothing, household electronic appliances, and transports, and explains the process of the understanding the metaphor in advertisement through the use of relevance theory, in addition, summarizes the characteristics of metaphorical words in different industries. This thesis will help the advertiser better employ metaphor according to their own industry’s trait, at the same time, it can assist the consumers to recognize the relationship between informative intention and communicative intention in advertisement, and achieve rational consumption...