广告中的双关语的语用功能和运用技巧pragmaticfunctionandapplicationofpunsinenglishadvertisements

广告中的双关语的语用功能和运用技巧pragmaticfunctionandapplicationofpunsinenglishadvertisements内容摘要：

to attract and arrest the attention of audience. Thus various figures of speech are widely employed in advertisements to attract the attention of the audience, because the rewarding character of artful deviation thus suggests that figurative advertising language, as pared with literal advertisement language, should produce a more positive attitude toward the advertisement[1]. Among the multiple rhetorical devices, pun is a prominent form of wordplay which has been widely employed in advertisements. Leigh [2], for instance, shows that in a large sample, 10% to 40% of all advertisements contain wordplay (the range depending on the definition of what constitutes a pun). General Characteristics of Advertisements There are always some shared characteristics in advertisements. First, advertisements should be vivid. In order to fulfill the AIDA principle, advertisers will first of all gain the attention of consumers. It is highly impossible to make the advertisements impressive. Vividness can also create beautiful envisions for consumers. So the frequent and wide use of figures of speech is an important characteristic of advertising English. In order to enhance the appeal of an advertisement, advertisers pay much attention not only to such expressive devices as plates, color and the layout of a printed page, but also to the choice of words or phrases, to make an advertisement beautiful and 6 attractive. In the practice of the advertising English, people pay more attention to pun to make the advertisement vivid and to provide rich imagination and plentiful associations for readers so as to stimulate their desire. Second, advertisements should be mercial, except those exclusively for the welfare of the public. It might be difficult for audience to feel mercial flavor simply from words in an advertising nowadays, for this is the purpose of advertised. But the pun makes it effectively. Firstly, advertising is paid message, with limited space and time, so it doesn’t allow verbiage to waste the investment. Pun with double meaning has the characteristic of small carrier but plenty of connotations. So it is very economic, effective and moneysaving to the advertiser. Secondly, in modern society, people pay more and more attention to effect, and get tired of the tedious advertisement. The pun in advertisements is usually formed by short sentences. Some use the name of the product as the theme of the advertisement. Some use excellent phrases to show the specialties of the product. To the audiences, it saves their time to get the information they want. Thirdly, usually, the audiences read or watch advertisement unintentionally and only can remember something unconsciously. So, to achieve expected propagandist effect, the advertisement must reduce the memory message. Pun is suitable for the requirement. The content is short, the form rhythmic, and the style novel, which are easily remembered and impressed people deeply. In a word, pun uses fewer words to express full message which is the 7 content of Economy Principle, and it usually reaches the purpose of advertisement that is to arouse consumers’ attention to a modity and induce them to use it. The detail will be given in Part Three. 2. Literature Review on Puns In this section, the author will introduce the puns. The Definition and the General Functions of Puns According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a pun is defined as the use of word in such a way as to suggest two or more meanings or different associations or the use of two or more words of the same or nearly the same sound with different meanings, so as to produce a humorous effect. Ruse also defines a pun[3] as a play on the dual or multiple meanings of a word or the similarity of sound between different words. Redfern believes that “pun[4], indeed, is a post renaissance word, and an inaccurate but convenient tag for a whole variety of rhetorical devices which play on words” . He also argues that puns do not have to be funny, and the epithets are serious or uniic, and they have often applied to them. In a word, a pun is a kind of play on words. Ambiguity Leech defines ambiguity[5] as language item which may have two or more 8 than two cognitive meanings. The first characteristic of a pun is that focus of its meaning lies in its ambiguity. No matter what forms they are, the speaker aims to achieve an ambiguity. In the daily munication, people try to avoid the presence of ambiguity, but as for puns, people deliberately create ambiguity. That is because the essence of a pun lies in its ambiguity. For example, (1) What kind of money do girls like the most? —Matrimony. It is a perfect example of puns in English. The ending elements money of the word matrimony has the similar sound with that of that money, which is considered as homophonic pun. It is known to everybody that girls usually expect to change their social and economic statuses through marriage. This pun is very ironic. Let’s look at another example: (2) We must hang together, or we shall all hang separately. This is a famous saying by American politician Benjamin Frankin during the Independence War. It is a homonymic pun. Here, the same word hang is used twice. Combined with the context, we will find that the former mean united while the latter refers to death by hanging. It is ambiguity that produces puns. It is important to keep in mind that the central and fundamental phenomenon upon which puns operate is ambiguity. A pun deliberately employs phonemic or semantic conditions to express one meaning on the surface while hiding another. People can find theoretical support for the ambiguity of puns. Li Xinhua 9 (2020) maintains that the language unit has both form and content. While there is not a onetoone r。