（英语语言文学专业论文）化妆品广告语中的语用预设分析.pdf

iv 化妆品广告语中的语用预设分析 化妆品广告语中的语用预设分析 研究生：杜小琳 年级：2005 级 学科专业：英语语言文学 导师：唐高元教授 研究方向：翻译理论与实践 中中 文文 摘摘 要要 广告是经济全球化和信息时代的一个重要的社会现象,在现代社会中扮演着越来越重 要的角色。广告语言是一种劝导说服性的语言，其最终目的是向潜在的顾客群体传递产品 或服务信息并最终劝说人们实施购买行为。广告撰写人为了宣传或促销某种商品和服务， 尽可能地采用一切语言及非语言的技巧来实现广告宣传的目的。语用预设就是其中一个非 常重要的语言工具。语用预设具有独特的属性：单向性、主观性、隐蔽性，这些特性有助 于增强广告语言的说服力。巧妙运用语用预设，可以衍生出交际所需的策略，广告用语对 语用预设的利用正是这种策略性的反映。本文从不同角度对该策略进行了系统的分析和论 证。 本文通过回顾预设研究的历史背景及理论背景，选取最有代表性的化妆品广告作为分 析材料，运用心理分析和定性研究的方法，对化妆品广告语言中的语用预设进行了尝试性 的分析。本文主要从预设与消费心理、预设与广告语言、预设与广告信息、预设与市场策 略及预设与文化差异等五个宏观层面来分析语用预设在广告语言中的功能。通过对诸多化 妆品广告的研究，全面分析了语用预设在广告传递的信息中发挥的作用。首先从消费者心 理角度分析，把预设分成了存在预设、事实预设、信念预设状态预设以及行为预设五种类 型。其次，通过对化妆品广告的分析发现，语用预设不仅可以使广告语言简洁和多样化， 还在广告衔接和连贯上起着重要的作用。再次，语用预设能够扩大广告信息的含量，使广 告语篇经济、简洁，降低广告费用。最后，巧妙运用语用预设的隐藏功能和委婉功能，可 实现广告制作者的自我保护，恰到好处地使广告取得委婉的表达效果，避免因直白表述引 起消费者对广告宣传的反感和抗拒。 本文通过研究语用预设在广告用语中的工作机制，希望能够帮助广告设计者更加有效 地运用语用预设这一策略，设计出更加科学，更具有吸引力的广告。同时也希望对消费者 辨别广告信息的真伪和选择适合的产品提供一定的启发。 关键词: 关键词: 语用预设；化妆品广告；功能；广告语言；社会心理 v analysis of pragmatic presupposition in cosmetic advertising postgraduate: du xiaolin grade: 2005 major: english language only statements are. strawson pointed out that there was a special relationship between these two sentences. that is to say, (3b) is the precondition for the speaker to utter sentence (3a); otherwise, there is no point to talk about whether the king is wise or not. he explicitly used the term “presupposition” to describe this kind of relationship and considered it as a kind of particular pragmatic inference. strawson also enlarges the scope of presuppositional phenomena. besides definite descriptions and proper names, qualification noun phrases, some other parts of an utterance like temporal clause and change-of-state words are included. since strawsons work, the discussion on presupposition has been connected with context. karttunen and other took stalnakers notion to be a sincerity condition on the utterance by a speaker of a sentence in a context. stalnakers presuppositions are what the speaker takes to be common background for the participants in the context. his notion, in contrast with freges is pragmatic presupposition requiring that the suppositions of the speaker be assumed to be those of his audience as well. the original philosophical studies on presupposition cause great responses in linguistic field. 3 they have been gradually turned into semantic studies and later turned into pragmatic studies since strawson and donnellan. some other important linguists in this field are: keenan, kinparsky, lakoff, katz, karttunen, stalnaker, leech, kempson, wilson, lyons, prince, sadock, wilson he never even started. the reason (6) is illogical or inconsistent because we can easily conjure up a situation in which this sentence can be felicitously uttered. suppose the addressee of sentence has said something to the effect that peter stopped working, whereupon the addresser utters sentence (6). in this case, the presupposition rests entirely on the context, or more specifically, the participants in the interaction. the above illustration is an instance of the defeasibility property of presuppositonal behavior. presuppositions are liable to be cancelled in certain contexts, either the immediate linguistic context or the less immediate discourse context, or in circumstances where contrary assumptions are made. just as george yule says, a presupposition is something that the speaker assumes to be the case prior to making an utterance. speakers, not sentences, have presuppositions. the following section will be a brief illustration of pragmatic presupposition. 2.2 pragmatic presupposition 2.2.1 three kinds of viewpoints on pragmatic presupposition pragmatic presupposition is the further development of semantic presupposition. it 7 overcomes the limitations of semantic presupposition. it combines our knowledge of the world and our knowledge of semantics and takes context into account. propositional attitude, felicity conditions and mutual knowledge are considered essential to utterance understanding and are often attributable to pragmatic presupposition. 1. pragmatic presupposition as propositional attitude pragmatic presupposition refers to the assumptions made by the speaker about the context in which language communication takes place. this conception of presupposition is heavily dependent on the frege-strawson view of presupposition, and pragmatic presupposition is defined as the belief or attitude of the speaker or hearer concerning the truth of a proposition. the central point of propositional attitude is the presupposed proposition must be one that both the speaker and the hearer believe to be true, or that the speaker thinks the hearer holds to be true. for example: (7a) sam has stopped drinking wine for breakfast. (7b) sam has not stopped drinking wine for breakfast. (7c) sam was drinking wine for breakfast. in the above example, c is the presupposition of (7a) and (7b). when a person speaks (7a) or (7b), he or she already holds the assumption that sam was drinking wine for breakfast. 2. pragmatic presupposition as felicity conditions: pragmatic presupposition as felicity conditions is associated with the speech act theory. austin is the first linguist to formulate a theory of presupposition in terms of felicity conditions for speech acts. austin holds that if the presuppositions of a sentence are not satisfied, speech acts performed by means of uttering the sentence are void (austin, 1962: 136). fillmore whose understanding of pragmatic presupposition is completely from the perspective of the felicity conditions considers pragmatic presupposition as the conditions requisite to the effective implementation of some speech act in the course of language communication. the following example is given by him: (8a) john accused harry of writing the letter. (8b) there was something blameworthy about the letter. in the above example, sentence b is necessary for john to perform the speech act of accusation successfully. whatever forms they may take, definitions of pragmatic presupposition as felicity conditions have in common that these conditions must be fulfilled in order for a particular speech act to be appropriately performed. 8 3. pragmatic presupposition as mutual knowledge: one definition that bears resemblance with propositional attitude and occurs frequently is that of pragmatic presupposition as mutual knowledge. this definition regards pragmatic presupposition as mutual knowledge or common ground between addresser and addressee. levinson defines pragmatic presupposition as follows: an utterance a pragmatically presupposes a proposition b iff a is appropriate only if b is mutually known by participants (levinson, 1983:205). this definition regards pragmatic presupposition as mutual knowledge or common ground between addresser and addressee because humans do share information. according to sperber and wilson, the communication process itself gives rise to shared information, and some sharing of information is necessary if communication is to be achieved (sperber coordinate structures are preferred to subordinate structures; active voices rather than passive voices are favored; imperative, interrogative and elliptical sentences are preferably used rather than negative ones; the present tense is dominant in the texts of the advertisements. rhetorical features: aside from the skillful use of vocabulary and syntactical structures, some theoretical figures are adopted to build up the expected effects. metaphor, simile, personification, repetition, pun etc are frequently used to make the advertisement more attractive and enable the language of ad to be highly artful and loaded. for example, by means of repeating words or ideas, something repeated frequently is more likely to be remembered. 3.2.3 linguistic principles of advertising language in the chapter 3.1, ultimate purpose and two main functions in ads are discussed. generally speaking, advertisements fulfill their purpose and functions mainly through the use of language, which is governed by some basic principles. they are “kiss principle, novelty principle and readability principles” (fatihi, 1991, 72). “kiss” principle: it refers to “keep it short and sweet”, which is of crucial importance in the use of language. actually, “short” refers to concise language which means “expressing a lot in a few words” because of the limited space and patience of the audience. “sweet” refers to the aesthetic value of advertising because the purpose of ad is to attract and motivate the audience (longman dictionary, 1998: 303). 17 novelty principle: novelty is closely associated with “new”, “fresh” and “creative”, which means “with every new catchy idea, new expressions come into existence in the language of advertisement” (ibid.: 38).this is usually realized in diction and in form. in advertisements, advertisers go all out to find or invent a creative word or phrase, sometimes unprecedented, to express an idea in a quite unexpected but acceptable way, such as compounding, clipping, blending, coining and affixation. readability principle: the readability principle requires the language of advertising to be readily acceptable and easily understandable. the audiences habits of reception in language and in culture must be taken into consideration. when the language is inconsistent or the culture is irrelevant against audiences habit, ad will end in failure. only being readable can be the message in ad easily memorized. 3.3 cosmetic advertisement in the encarta encyclopedia, “advertising” is defined as “a form of commercial mass communication designed to promote the sale of a product or service, or a message on behalf of an institution, organization, or candidate for political office”. in oxford advanced learners dictionary of current english with chinese translation, cosmetic is regarded as preparation, substance, especially one that adds color designed to make the skin or hair beautiful such as face-cream lipstick. the us food and drug administration (fda) make the definition of “cosmetic” as (1) articles intended to be rubbed, poured, sprinkled, or sprayed on, introduced into, or otherwise applied to the human body or any part for cleansing, beautifying, promoting attractiveness, or altering the appearance, (2) articles intended for use as a component of any such articles; except that such term shall not include soap. cosmetic advertising is a communication of information between the advertiser and the potential consumers (especially women), which aims to make their cosmetic products known to all and urge the consumers to buy their products through certain media such as television, newspaper, direct mail, radio, magazine, the internet etc. 18 chapter 4 application of pragmatic presupposition in advertisement as discussed in the last chapter, the ultimate objective of advertisement is to attempt to persuade audience to buy certain products through various strategies. presupposition is one of the most powerful strategies exploited by the advertisers. the study on application of presupposition can help the consumers make informed decisions when purchasing products. mentioned above, the advertising language is a kind of applied language and shows its own characteristics. as the language of advertising is in different degrees influenced by psychology, linguistics, economics, sociology, marketing strategy and aesthetics etc., the analysis of presupposition in advertisements will be carried out from the following five aspects: presupposition and consumers psychology, presupposition-triggers in advertising language, presupposition and advertising language, presupposition and advertising information, and presupposition and culture. 4.1 presupposition and consumers psychology the purpose of ad is to affect the attitude of consumers and their behavior. consumers are both the target of advertising and active individuals who possess their own ideas and viewpoints on advertisements in advertising activities. while studying advertising, it is inevitable for us to study consumers psychology. consumers usually consider four factors in the process of purchasing a product: interest, need, values-orientation and self-awareness. the four factors respectively refer to whether they like it, whether they need it, whether it is worth purchasing and whether they can purchase it. so advertisers cant fulfill their aim without the use of consumers psychology. (12) behind that healthy smile, theres crest kid. (crest tooth paste) a. using crest tooth past makes your teeth snow-white and healthy. b. the quality of tooth paste affects the effect of brushing teeth. c. brushing teeth must be done from childhood. to comprehend this ad, consumers need combine the known information with new one. they do some speculation and inference by imagination smoothly. so ad of crest tooth paste not only avoids the antagonistic attitude from consumers but also gains the intention of propaganda and agitation. consumers who have deep impression of the ad also will continuously pass down the presupposed information. this ad illustrates that presupposition promote consuming psychology successfully. (13) are you going gray too early? (ad for hair dye) 19 you are going gray. everyone wants to be young and doesnt like gray hair. based on the consuming psychology, the ad makes its agitation and propaganda. due to catching the consumers psychology, consumers dont feel resentment. to promote goods and persuade readers to buy, advertisers employ all kinds of consumers psychology such as saving money, fear, saving time, vanity, less labor, love, nostalgia, warmth, eroticism and so on. on the other hand, public consumers clearly know that the purpose of advertising is to attract more and more consumers to buy the promoted goods. awash in a sea of commercials in modern society, most of consumers keep a wary eye on overstated ads and are suspicious about talkative advertisers. if advertisers overstate about their goods or reveal the aim directly, readers will be disgusted with them and wont buy any goods at all. to attain promoting aim, shrewd advertisers usually employ presupposition to convey indirect information in advertising language. its true that advertisement is closely connected with consumers psychology. to reach the final goals, advertisers employ consumers psychology in advertisement to persuade them more effectively. in this dissertation well discuss how presupposition influences consumers psychology. therefore, presupposition can be classified into five kinds from the view of consumers psychology: existential presupposition, fact presupposition, belief presupposition, state presupposition and behavior presupposition. 4.1.1 existential presupposition as the name implies, existential presupposition presupposes the existence of something or some ideas. it is triggered by definite descriptions formed by using such words as definite article the, proper names, , possessives like annes, my, your, our and demonstrative pronoun this, that, those, these and so on. in particular, possessives can lead to a very strong presupposition about the existence of something. for instance, the noun phrase “jacks computer”. theres no doubt that an important aspect of any communication involves the presuppositions that are present. a presupposition is a necessary precondition for the processing of any communication. existential presupposition is indispensable in order for the advertisement to work. (14) an intimate party. the inhibited fragrance from relvon. (intimate perfume) there is something that has “the inhibited fragrance” in intimate perfume. the presupposition triggered by the definite article “the” and “relvon” is existential presupposition. by adopting it, short as this advert is, it can leave a very deep impression on the readers. the function of the presupposition here is to promote a kind of ideology within ad, which is that “inhibited fragrance” is somehow related of perfume and party. through existential presupposition, the ad can be designed subtly to influence the attitudes 20 and the behaviors of consumers. the claims will have some psychological effects on the reader or viewer although they are only assumed to be true. 4.1.2 fact presupposition fact presupposition refers to the presupposition that is made to “state fact”. it is one of the standard examples of presupposition phenomenon and realized by adopting lexical and syntactical presupposition triggers. as the proverb goes, “action speaks louder than words”. one of the powerful measures to influence the attitude of individuals or groups of people or affect their actions is to present some undeniable facts to them. from the psychological perspective, readers attitude will be attracted subtly and will be geared to the fact presented to them. so their action will perhaps be activated. although through the use of presupposition the facts presented are only assumed to be the facts, the advertisement writer can still manipulate it for his or her purposes. it is obvious that this way of presenting information is fairly beneficial both to the advertising agency and to the producer or manufacturer etc. compared with other means, presupposition is a more roundabout technique used in advertising to achieve advertisers aim. however, not many readers really think about whether the so-called facts presented by fact presuppositions are true or not. generally, many people would not question the authenticity of the presupposition embedded in advertisement seriously for the following three reasons. firstly, in most cases, questioning what is presented in pr