摘 要
广告，顾名思义就是广而告之。作为一种宣传和传播信息模式，广告的影响不容忽视，因为它不仅只是一种说服顾客进行消费的技巧，更重要的是，它已逐渐成为社会交流的必须手段之一。本文通过对大量法语广告实例进行略论，并参照国外着名广告人Guy Cook等的理论，详细剖析了广告法语的语言特点。 广告在我们今天的社会几乎是无孔不入，它的传播介质多种多样，包括报纸、杂志、电视、广播、网络等。广告具有鲜明的目的性，即说服顾客进行购买，这种目的性决定了其语言的特色性风格，使其独立于其它文体，在语言学范畴内值得探讨。本文选定法语这一全球普遍使用的语言，就其运用于广告领域而产生的一些语言学特点和广告本身的社会性特点进行深入略论，希望能对相关领域的探讨有一定的借鉴影响和参考价值。
本文共分为五章，第一章追溯了广告的起源，对广告的分类、影响及定义做了简单概要；第二章介绍了广告和文体学的基本定义，广告中，文字和图像的完美结合取决于创意和所用媒体，但它们共同组成了广告语言；第三章从句法律、修辞学、词汇学等理论切入，用大量例子略论了广告法语的语言特点，法语论文，并从语篇略论的角度对其语言特点进行了剖析；在语篇略论的章节中，引用了Guy Cook的语篇略论模型，并引入了广告问题探讨领域新近提出的"文章关联性"等概念；第四章结合了第三章的观点，通过具体法语广告实例对标题中的用词、句子结构、称谓模式、修辞格进行了阐述，法语论文，略论了广告语言对广告效果的作用；最后一章指出了广告法语发展的口语化和简单化趋势及其目前存在的模糊性语言特点，揭开了广告华丽词藻下所掩盖的非真实的广告氛围，批判了其模糊性误导消费者的消极一面。 关键词：广告；广告法语；语言特点
Abstract
As a way of propagating and transmitting information, advertising‘s role connot be underestimated because it is not only an artful technique in persuading people to buy, but also gradually has become a must for social communication which in turn influences the development of society and economy. The purpose of this paper is to study the linguistic features and sociological features of advertising English, in the hope to help copywriters at home markets in their creating process.
Nowadays advertising has penetrated into every corner of our life as its transmitting media in many forms: newspaper, magazine, TV, radio as well as network. The goal of advertising decides its language to be simple and direct, distinct from the characteristics of other discourses. Thus an analysis on the linguistic features of advertising English in the linguistic field is worthwhile. Under such circumstances, a study on the linguistic features of advertising English will have practical effects on the composing and translating work of the copywriters.
The whole paper is divided into five chapters. The first chapter traces back the origin of advertising and a brief introduction on the classifications, roles and definitions of advertising is presented for the later discussion.
The second chapter introduces the theory of advertisements and stylistics, the precise balance of words (either spoken or written) and pictures is determined by the creative concept and the medium used, but the combination of images and words makes up the language of advertising.
The third chapter starts from the theories in syntax, lexicology, rhetoric and ends with the linguistic features analyzed in the field of discourse analysis.
The fourth chapter combines the viewpoints from the previous chapter third and explores the effect of the advertising English as a whole advertising process. The last chapter, also the conclusion part, shows that though advertising language appears to be flowery and refined, its content is no better than commonest language could convey. By exposing the various techniques advertisers have employed in their writing, this part hopes to remind consumers that advertising English is gradually attaining the negative and ambiguous role in guiding people to buy.
Keywords: Advertising, Advertising English, Linguistic Features
Chapter 1 Introduction
No other statement could have summed up the charm of advertisement than what Aldous Huxley has commented. As he has said advertisement as a literary form is the most exciting, the most arduous literary form of all, and the most pregnant in curious possibilities. In his comment he asserted advertisement is a literary form and the copywriting process is the delightful and salubrious exercise for the mind. But all in all, what is advertising, and what makes it unique?
1.1 History of Advertisement
Advertisement emerged from the womb of commodity production and exchange. The condition for the existence of advertising is "at least a segment of the population must live above the subsistence level". When this situation occurs it also becomes necessary for "the producers of materially ‘unnecessary‘ goods to do something to make people want to acquire their commodities." (Vestergaard and Schroder 4)
The embryonic form of advertising in the world is street cries, which exist even today. Advertising was not unknown in ancient Greece and Rome, but advertising as we recognize it did not start until the seventeenth century in the West. It was at about this time that newspaper began to circulate. Before that, it is printing which was first invented in China and then introduced to the West that played a vital role in the production of print advertising. "Classified" (small ads) types of advertising were dominant before the nineteenth century and style and language used in ads at that time tended to be direct and informative. The industrial Revolution, which began in England in the mid-1700s and reached the United States by the early 1800s, facilitated mass-production of goods. Meanwhile advertising became more and more important in the industrial market. The great breakthrough for advertising came only in the late nineteenth century. Technology and mass-production techniques were then sufficiently developed for more firms to be able to turn out products of roughly the same quality and at roughly the same price. This brought on a crisis of over-production and under consumption which meant that the market needed to be stimulated by advertising. At this time advertising changed its function from proclamation to persuasion. In the twentieth century, advertising developed rapidly alongside the advent of new media-radio and television in succession.
According to Richard Pollay‘s content analysis of two thousand print ads from ten leading magazines in the USA, ads have progressively turned towards the emotional rather than the informative approach and there is a shift seeing human nature as rational to seeming it as emotional.
Today in China, while our economic structure is shifting from the entirely planned economy to the socialist market economy system, advertising is becoming more and more active and sophisticated. In 1992, China‘s advertising expenditure reached $ 862 million, among the fastest growing countries in Asia. This year with the entry of China into WTO, this expenditure figure will undoubtedly rise up, which will support the view that advertising is an indispensable means for providing the information that all market-oriented industrialized societies need for their economies to function efficiently.
1.2 Classifications of Advertising
Advertising may be classified by medium (newspaper, magazine, radio, television). By target audience (consumer, industrial, business), by geography (international, national, regional, local), or by its function or purpose (product or non-product, commercial or noncommercial, primary demand or selective demand, direct action or indirect action).
Because it is difficult to gain access to enough date for English commercials and ads on radio or TV, thus, the subject of this research paper will mainly concentrate on the print advertising.
1.3 Roles of Advertising
An advertiser‘s main purpose is to present and exhibit product or service, and to spread the influence and coverage of which to the extent that the potential purchasing population becomes real and actual. Simply put, advertisers try by the various means at their disposal to get people to buy the product or service advertised. Moreover, advertisers want potential purchasers to consider what is advertised to the exclusion of all other similar products or services. They therefore attempt to construct an advertisement that will fully involve the attention of the potential purchaser and which will have a persuasive effect. Advertisers thus create a semiotic world in order to persuade their audience of essential "rightness" of purchasing the product or service advertised.
1.4 Definitions of Advertising
After a brief introduction of the classifications and roles of advertising, we now come to the definitions of advertising. From different perspectives or purposes, the definitions might also vary. In English, the word "advertise" has its origin in "advertere" in Latin, meaning "to inform somebody of something", "to bring into notice" or "to draw attention to something", etc. In Chinese, the equivalent term "guanggao" means "widely announce".
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