Abstract Advertising slogans are almost everywhere in the rapidly developing society nowadays. In order to provide slogan receptors with multitudes of efficient messages in the limited time and space, metaphors are often employed in slogan design. Metaphor as the cornerstone of meaning and truth plays a vitally important role in our understanding of the external world．Simultaneously, as rhetoric means in literature, the ultimate function of the metaphor in advertising English is to attract the public attention. The metaphor is also a kind of cognitive phenomena, closely related to the mode and evolution of people’s thinking. This thesis, using the Cooperative Principle of Grice, analyzes and evaluates the function and usage of metaphors in slogans of advertising English, laying special emphasis on the significance of the CP to metaphors in advertising slogans and the advertising effect resulted from the violation of the Maxim of Quality.55662

Key words: the Cooperative Principle; Metaphor; advertising slogan; violation

摘 要广告标语在当今社会几乎无处不在,为了在有限的时间或空间向标语受众传递更多更为有效的信息,标语策划者在其广告中大量运用隐喻这一手段。隐喻在人类认识世界的过程中发挥了重要作用,是意义与真理的基石。因此,任何一种隐喻意义都应与字面意义保持一致。事实上,隐喻中蕴藏着某种隐喻无法捕到的东西,而且我们是无法将隐喻中的情感、审美因素与描写、认知成分区分开的。同时,作为文学中的一种修辞方法,隐喻在广告英语中的功能最终是为了吸引公众的注意。除此,隐喻又是一种认知现象,与人的思维方式及思维发展过程密切相关。在这种情况下,本文从合作原则理论角度着手,总结出该理论对广告标语中的隐喻的指导意义,并致力于研究合作原则对隐喻性广告标语是如何作用的以及隐喻违反合作原则产生的效果,从而使观众捕获到标语的准确信息意图。

毕业论文关键词: 合作原则 ；隐喻；广告标语；违反

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. On Metaphors in English Advertisement Slogans 2

2.1 Definition and Characteristics of Slogans 2

2.2 Metaphors in English Advertisement Slogans 3

3. Paul Grice’s Cooperative Principle 5

3.1 Definition of the Cooperative Principle 5

3.2 Grice’s Maxims 5

3.3 On Conversational Implicature 7

4. Analysis of Metaphors in English Advertisement Slogans with CP 7

4.1 Functions and Application of Metaphors in Advertisement Slogans 8

4.2 The Significance of the CP to Metaphors in Advertisement Slogans 9

4.3 Effects of Metaphors’ Flouting the Maxim of Quality in Advertisements. 10

5. Conclusion 13

Works Cited 14

1. Introduction

Originating from the Latin word advertere, advertisement (ad) aims to attract attention. Its basic function is to spread information. In the growing era of commodity economy, advertising as a business strategy, is playing an increasingly more important role in the world. As a result, advertising slogan as a commercial language has gradually formed its own unique style and characteristics. It depends on concise language, rich connotation, and appropriate rhetorical devices (rhetorical figures) to convey product information, establish brand image and stimulate people’s consumption desire. As far as rhetorical devices are concerned, metaphor is usually applied to create impressive slogans. And many scholars have studied the property of metaphor or formation of advertisement, English morphology and rhetorical devices in advertising. But few people know how the metaphor is used to form slogan and what theory it relies on. Thus, after we know that the metaphor in advertising slogans are produced by violating the Maxim of Quality of the Cooperative Principle, the most important thing is how the CP affects the metaphor in advertising slogans and what effects it will produce.