A Pragmatic Study Of Misleading Advertisements From The Perspective Of Critical Pragmatics

The advertising has become an essential part of people’s life which is closely related to human beings.No matter when it is,no matter where you are and no matter what you do,you can find advertising in every corner of your daily life.To make a long story short,the advertising is ubiquitous.It is no exaggeration to say that humans live in a society of advertising.The advertising has brought us convenience.Through advertising,consumers can analyze numerous kinds of information about the goods and choose the most suitable one for themselves from the different sellers.On the other hand,this kind of competition among several businessmen achieves the technology improvement.While,consumers can get a satisfactory price to buy suitable products.Moreover,unusual and innovative slogans often put deep impressions on the mind of people.By contrast,advertising also poses problems.As we all know the advertising language should focus on the reality and credibility,in fact the most serious problem is cheating.Some advertising deliberately uses some kind of discourse subjectively or objectively to deceive consumers to mislead consumption.In the paper,the writer is going to discuss the misleading and deceiving in the advertising language from the pragmatic view.On this account,the paper is from the critical pragmatic perspective to explore the advertising “Misleading”.Mainly under the guidance of critical pragmatic theory(the Cooperative Principle,Politeness Principle and Relevance Theory),this paper analyzes the pragmatic features in actual advertising language,aimed at revealing the “Misleading” that maybe exist in the social context in order to improve consumers’ vigilance against this kind of “trap”.The paper is based on the relevant pragmatic theories and systematically studies the social language--advertising language.Meanwhile,it is from the view of Critical Pragmatics and expands the field of pragmatic study.The writer chooses the examples from people’s ordinary life.The problematical advertising materials are from the Internet and offend the regulations in China.The study analyzes the advertising language under the pragmatic theories to provide reference for the consumers to raise vigilance and rational consumption.The writer uses the method--Case Study and Quaititative Analysis and the advertising language are chosen from the dynamic contexts.It can enhance not only people’s understanding of society and culture behind the social language,but also people’s sensitivity to the pragmatic “trap” and tricks in daily communication.From the view of Critical Pragmatics,the advertising language is composed by vocabulary,sentences and contexts.The vocabulary may have polyphonic words or polysemy and the sentences may be ambiguous,vague or even the wrong order.What’s most,the context may influence the implicature,especially the non-verbal factors.In a word,consumers should maintain vigilance and rational consumption;advertisers should abide by the relevant laws and regulations,properly use ad language;the government should perfect the legal system and strengthen supervision.In this view,the study has a highly practical value and realistic significance for language education,mass media,economic development,legal construction,social harmony.