A Comparative Study Of Persuasion Mechanism Of Narrative Auto Commercials In Chinese And Western Markets-A Cognitive Poetics Approach

With the rapid development of automobile industry in the 20~thh and 21~stt century,there emerge many famous auto giants,such as Audi,Volkswagen,Mercedes-Benz,Nissan,Ford,BMW and so on.And auto ads industry booms a lot,presenting many popular and impressive auto advertisements.Nevertheless,in recent years,global auto market has stagnated,owing to a faltering global demand and an increasingly tough competition among rivals.Faced with this predicament,auto manufactures have no choice but to innovate and cater better to the market.And from the marketing standpoint,the importance of grasping the customer psychology in auto advertisement can’t be more highlighted.As a kind of narratives,advertising is accomplished by the dialogue between narrator and the audience,which is more than the transmission of information.Actually,the interaction lies in that the narrator exerts the influence of advertising on the audience and the audience purchases the product and shares his feedback.And the precondition of this process is a good auto advertiser with insight into psychological,cultural and social phenomena of target markets,who can grasp what their potential customers want and cater to their needs.Actually,in terms of appealing to the psychological orientation of latent customers in their communities,advertisers usually unwittingly adopt the methods of cognitive poetics to exert the influence of pathos,ethos and logos on their audience.Cognitive poetics is a school of literary criticism that applies the principle of cognitive science,particularly,cognitive psychology,to the interpretation of literary texts.It has strong ties to reader-response criticism,which makes it possible to analyze the realization of Aristotle’s persuasion mechanism in narrative auto commercials from the perspective of three sub-theories of cognitive poetics:Prototype,Figure-Ground and Possible World because these sub-theories are commonly used for narratological analysis and closely related to readers’psychological process on the basis of different ethnic customs and cultural background.This writing attempts to give a comparative study of the different persuasive mechanisms in narrative auto advertising in Chinese and western markets so as to find the reasons for the similarity and difference between them by combining Aristotle’s persuasive strategies with the theories of cognitive poetics.Based on the theories of cognitive poetics,this thesis makes a quantitative analysis of 35 narrative auto commercials in Chinese market and 35 narrative auto commercials in western markets and a qualitative analysis of 14 Chinese and 16 western narrative auto commercials and finds that:(1)The construction of Prototype,Figure-Ground and Possible World in narrative auto commercials can cater better to the audiences’psychology,arouse their responses,even enhance their purchasing desires.(2)The portrayal of prototype character in auto commercial can arouse audience’s emotions such as empathy,family affection,friendship,delivering the influence of pathos.Figure-Ground structures are commonly used in auto commercials to emphasize the car’s benefits and advantages over its’rivals,so as to exert the influence of logos on the audience and hint them to act.Auto advertisers sometimes deliver their good sense or good will by dissuasion and warning in an auto commercial,such as depicting a possible world(car accident)in an auto commercial to unveil possible consequences of breaking traffic rules.This can not only show special solicitude to potential customers,but also enhancing the credibility and reliability of the car brand,realizing the effect of ethos on the audience.(3)Due to different cultural backgrounds,social structures and consumption customs,there exist many differences in the persuasion mechanism of narrative auto advertising in Chinese and western market.For establishing prototypes to achieve pathos,Chinese markets stress more on family union while western markets prefer individualism.Standouts are more frequently adopted as prototypes in narrative auto commercials in Chinese markets while western markets are more inclined to take ordinary people as prototypes.Dog is a popular prototype in both NACCM and NACWM.When it comes to foregrounding figures to realize logos,a brand is more valued in NACCM while product performance and users’feedback are the spotlights in NACWM.In terms of exerting the influence of ethos in possible worlds,NACCM prefer positive and uplifting connotation,and civilian’s initiative contribution is more stressed,while NACWM prefer negative connotation(warning or dissuasion)and superhero-style auto function is usually proposed to resolve the problem.It is hoped that this research will play a part in expanding the research field of cognitive poetics and going into the persuasion mechanism of NACCM and NACWM,so as to bring enlightenment to further researches of narrative auto advertisement from cognitive perspective.