Abstract

With the development of international economy and china’s entry of WTO, advertisement has become one of indispensable part in this highly industrial society and played an more and more important role in the development of economy. Advertisement is an art, which requires the application of some rhetoric. Puns, serves as one kind of important figures of speech, inject fresh blood into advertisement, attaching audience’s eyes with its conciseness, humor and novelty. From the aspect of the pragmatic use of pun, the paper firstly briefly introduces the concepts of pun and advertisement. Then identifying the sorts of pun from the aspects of phonetic, grammar and syntax, etc. Then summarizing the function of pun. During this process, the paper gives analysis of concrete instances.

   Key words: advertisement; pun; classification; function

Contents

Abstract

摘要

1 Introduction-1

1.1 The overview of the use of pun in advertisements-1

1.2 The necessity of using pun in advertisements-1

2 The former analyses of pun in advertisements-2

2.1 The definition of puns in advertisement-2

2.2 The characteristics of puns in advertisement-2

2.2.1 Ambiguity-2

2.2.2 The Double Context-3

2.3 Classification of puns in advertisement-3

2.3,1 Homonphonic puns-3

2.3.2 Semantic puns-4

2.3.3 Homographicl puns-4

2.3.4 Idiomatic puns-5

3 Viewing puns from the pragmatic aspect-5

3 .1The pragmatic analysis of puns-5

3.2 Pragmatic classification of puns-8

3.2.1 Information Conveying-8

3.2.2 Attention Attracting-9

3.2.3 Making Advertisement Brief-10

3.2.4 Making Advertisement Wit and Implicit-11

3.2.5 Making Advertisement Aesthetic-12

4 Relevance issues and matters need attention-13

4.1 Relevance problems of pun in advertisement-13

4.2 Matters need attention-13

5 Conclusion-14

5.1 Major finding-14

5.2 Suggestions for further research-15