An Analysis Of The English Advertising Discourse From An Interdisciplinary Perspective Of Face And Experiential Marketing

In the contemporary society, advertising has penetrated into every corner of our life with the main purpose of promoting products or services. When designing the advertising discourse, the advertiser relies on the use of language yet is often constrained by it while disseminating the information about the products to consumers, thus realizing his purpose. According to the author’s observation, it is found that the majority of the studies on advertising discourse concentrates on linguistic features and fails to consider the language in use and its internal connection or interaction with economic activities. Therefore, studying advertising discourse by integrating linguistics and marketing theory is of practical significance to gain deeper understanding of advertising discourse.Based on face theory and experiential marketing theory, this thesis takes female consumer goods advertising discourse (FCGAD) as the object of study to explore the politeness and experiential marketing as well as the association pattern between them lying in the advertising discourse, thus further analyzing how the advertiser reflects his the marketing purpose through the use of advertising language.Enlightened by Brown and Levinson’s face theory and five experiential modules proposed by Schmitt, the author has worked out a cross-disciplinary theoretical framework for the present research. By analyzing the advertising discourse with this self-built framework, this thesis reveals that the advertiser implements experiential marketing strategies as well as politeness strategies in advertising discourse.Guided by the framework, this thesis analyzes FCGAD collected from original English original fashion magazines by both qualitative methods and quantitative methods. It is indicated that when designing the advertising discourse, the advertiser not only employs the association of positive face and experiential marketing, but also the association of negative face and experiential marketing. The experiential marketing that saves consumers’positive face refers to those employing positive politeness strategies to provide and further associate with some experiences in the advertising discourse, so that the effect of politeness and sales promotion can be realized. These strategies include claiming common ground through experiences, cooperatively enjoying the experiences and giving experiential gifts. There are three distinct patterns that associate the experiences with positive politeness strategies, i.e. emphasizing the experiences the products can provide to satisfy consumers’needs, realizing marketing by enhancing politeness with experiences, promoting sales by bringing experiences from politeness strategies to further establish a friendly relationship. Experiential marketing that saves consumers’ negative face refers to those using negative politeness strategies to stress certain experiences in the advertising discourse for promotional purposes. Realization of these strategies involves providing experiences based on hedges, avoiding coercion through experiences and communicating the intention not to impinge experiences on consumers. Consumer experiences can be introduced by associating with negative politeness strategies in the following patterns, including and adding experiential values based on politeness to realize marketing, arousing purchasing desire by providing objective experiential evaluations, and facilitating marketing by coupling politeness with experiences to make the request joyful.According to the results of quantitative analysis, it is found that positive politeness strategies are widely used in English FCGAD, that is to say, experiential marketing that maintains consumers’ positive face is more frequently employed by the advertiser. This preference can be explained by low power distance and low-context communication pattern in western culture.