The Study of Metaphor in Advertisement 隐喻与广告研究.doc

英语词汇学the study of metaphor in advertisementabstract：as a language phenomenon and a cognitive behavior，metaphor is widely used in the advertisements for its unique rhetorical function and expressive effects. it not only makes the advertisements concise and vivid but novel and instructive. the metaphor in advertisement can also arouse the audiences imagination, and make the advertisements more appealing and persuasive. based on an analysis of metaphor examples from both chinese and foreign advertisements，this paper holds that metaphor is the necessity of cognitive tool for human beings. value metaphors，moral metaphors，comparison metaphors as well as the metaphor cognition are also introduced. the paper finally points out that due to linguistic，social and cultural differences，there are subtle distinctions in explaining metaphorical concept. key words：metaphor；cognition；advertisement nowadays, concerning with advertisement, different people have different opinions. for most of the people, the distinct feature of advertisement is that advertisement is a combination of content and style. that is to say, a good advertisement not only has attraction in content, but also has charm in style. obviously, the determinative factor of a good or a bad advertisement is whether the use of metaphor is appropriate or not. it can be found that the use of metaphor plays a very important role in advertisement. without the use of metaphor, absolutely, there is no good advertisement. therefore, it is necessary to make an analysis and study on this subject.1. introduction introduction of advertisements advertisements have already become a crucial part of our daily life. we are exposed to advertisements whenever we turn on the tv, read newspapers or magazines, walk on the street or surf on the internet. we are living in a world of advertisements and have been deeply influenced by them. its popularity has aroused a great amount of interest studying a language of advertisements in different disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, linguistics, literary criticism, and medium studies. metaphor as one of the important features advertising language has also been studied by many linguists and language learners.1.2 introduction of metaphormetaphor has traditionally been considered as rhetorical device and characteristic of language until lakoff and johnson put forward the conceptual metaphor theory which contends that metaphors are cognitive mechanisms, whereby one experiential domain is partial mapped onto a different domain. the domain that is mapped is called the source domain, and the domain onto which it is mapped is called the target domain. lakoff and johnson claim in their influential book metaphors we live by that “metaphor is primarily a matter of thought and action, and only derivatively a matter of language.” the cognitive treatment of metaphor by lakoff and johnson in metaphors we live by is ready a milestone in the study of metaphor.1.3 the study of metaphorthe study of metaphor pragmatics has already been flourishing in the past decades. many scholars have attempted to study metaphor in relation to grices cooperative principle and austins speech act theory. a more elaborated pragmatic approach to metaphor is found in searl who was put forward a set of principles to ensure success in communication in the case of metaphorical utterance. in 1986, since sperber and wilson first outlined their relevance theory with an attempt to study human communication from the perspective of human cognitive. this theory has been applied to the study of various kinds of communication including the study of metaphor in advertisements. both lakoff and jonsons approach and sperber and wilsons approach have attached much importance to the study of metaphor in advertisements in recent years. metaphor occurs first of all on the level of cognition; it is a mapping from a certain source domain onto a target domain, but it cannot be thoroughly understood without contextual environment. metaphors are context-dependent communicative devices that are used in concrete social-political contexts. however, previous studies were mainly focused on one aspect of them; few studies have been conducted from a cognitive-pragmatic perspective. the author of his thesis attempts to combine the two approaches and tentatively suggests a cognitive-pragmatic aapproach to the study of metaphor on the basis of lakoff and johsons conceptual metaphor theory and sperber and wilsons relevance theory. it is the authors hope that the research will provide a more comprehensive and efficient method for studying and understanding metaphor in english advertisements.2. ontological metaphors in english advertisements.2.1 applications of ontological metaphors in advertisement.metaphors play an important role in the language of advertisements. they are considered by many to be the most important and the most efficient device in advertisements. there are several reasons for the advertisements to employ metaphor in advertisements： first, metaphor can makes the advertisements become more interesting and then can attract the peoples attention. second, by producing metaphorical utterance, the consumers is made to see resemblances between the promoted product or service and the object or properly featured in the metaphor and thus can make the advertisement more powerful. third, by applying metaphor in advertisement, the advertiser can avoid taking responsibility for certain implicatures arising from the advertisements. forth, metaphors are economical ways of expressing complex thoughts, for advertisers have only limited amount of space of in print advertising or time in tv commercials because of their expenses, while metaphor is a condensed way of expressing a range of indeterminate implicaures. therefore, the appropriate application of metaphors in advertisements is an attractive and persuasive way of promoting the sale of products.2.2 ontological metaphorsontological metaphors, as one kind of metaphors according to the classification of lakoff and johnson, reveal that we understand many abstract experiences in terms of viewing intangible concepts as entities. identifying these abstract an indefinable non-entitles as substances or entities makes it possible to “refer to them, categorize them, group them, and quantify them and, by this means, reason about them”, and cognitively manipulate them.since advertisements are usually used to promote the sale of new products or services that are unfamiliar to customers, advertisers need to describe the special qualities and merits of their products or distinctive services. and these descriptions usually contain abstract concepts. in order to refer to, quantify or identify aspects of these abstract experiences, it is essential for advertisers to employ ontological metaphors in advertisements.2.3 advertisements as ostensive-inferential communication the two intentions of ostensive-inferential communicationsperber and wilsons relevance theory was developed on the basis of the analysis of ostensive-inferential communication. according to them, ostensive-inferential communication contains two intentions: informative intention and communicative intention. the informative intention refers to the intention to make manifest or more manifest to the audience a set of assumptions, while the communicative intention refers to the intention to make it mutually manifest to the audience and communicator that the communicator has this informative intention. they claim that their theory applies to human communication in general. and it should follow then that in principle it works for advertising as well since advertising is a form of communication. as advertisement aim to persuade the audience to buy the product or services advertised by communicator or to adopt the ideas advocated by the advertisement, they are certainly communications between the advertiser and the potential consumer, although they different from oral, linguistic communication between two persons in a face-to-face situation.3. conclusion3.1 to use metaphor in advertisements.english advertisements can encourage competition, guide consumption, promote sales, and transmit information. metaphor can make language vivid and humorous. simile, metaphor, pun, personification, parallelism, rhyme are the most frequently used metaphoric devices in english advertisements, which can achieve desired effects of english advertisements. for the use of metaphor in english advertisements, english advertisement composers can use the simplest language to express the most complex meaning, which makes the metaphor fully express its charm. from the analysis and study above, it can be found that the use of metaphoric devices contributes