A Study On The Pragmatic Economy Of Advertising English

More and more scholars at home and abroad have realized that advertising language has become an important research topic and started to engage in it, and the studies have been conducted from different perspectives. At the same time, as a newly emerged branch of linguistics, pragmatics has been developing into an upsurge in the past thirty years. Therefore, a cross-disciplinary study of the two subjects—an application of the relevant theories of pragmatics to the research of the increasingly active and vital advertising language—is of real value and great significance. Generally speaking, the advertising aims successful communication. Only the communication between advertising and audience succeeds, can the purpose of advertising that is to promote the sale, make the products popular, and contribute to the long-term development of the corporation be achieved. Therefore, advertising is a dynamic process and the analysis of the advertising language from the pragmatic perspectives is more practical.The thesis takes English advertising language as the research object. It mainly focuses on the analysis of various samples or slogans from the advertisements at home and abroad, which the author has read or collected as data-base materials. And from its linguistic features, the study explores the embodiment of the Pragmatic Economy in advertising English. After the exploration of the study of the economy principle in the pragmatic field, especially the Processibility Principle, the Clarity Principle, the Economy Principle and the Expressivity Principle of Leech’s textual pragmatics, it draws a tentative proposal of Pragmatic Economy in this thesis. The combination of Leech’s textual pragmatics and the economy provides a new viewpoint for the study of advertising, while most of the previous studies have focused on styles or rhetorical devices. According to the Pragmatic Economy, only the language arrives at the optimal distribution of easy-decoding, clear, economy and expressivity, can it be regarded as the realization the Pragmatic Economy. The qualitative approach and analytic approach are adopted in the studying process. Then the study makes an exploration on how the Pragmatic Economy is observed and achieves the maximization of utility from the six aspects discussed in the thesis that is phonology-related devices, word-related devices, sentence-related devices, rhetoric of personification, exaggeration and pun, politeness and the discourse-related devices. Finally, it gives a cooperative understanding of the Pragmatic Economy of the advertising English. At last, based on the analysis of English advertising language discussed in this thesis, it summarizes that the Pragmatic Economy is throughout all of the advertising language and meanwhile the study from pragmatics is important and necessary for the research. It draws a tentative conclusion of the present study. It is the author’s great desire that this kind of theoretical combination and factual analysis may serve as a basis for the further study of advertising development and promote the study of the economy principle and the pragmatic study. Meanwhile, some limitations are also pointed out and suggestions for future research are provided.