告英语的模糊性探析-The Analysis of Fuzziness in Advertising English [3]
论文作者:佚名论文属性:短文 essay登出时间:2009-04-13编辑:黄丽樱点击率:9008
论文字数:2915论文编号:org200904131630062982语种:中文 Chinese地区:中国价格:免费论文
关键词:advertising Englishfuzzinesssemantic and rhetorical analysis广告英语模糊性语义和修辞分析
ge of advertising conveys the most complicated meaning with the simplest language and is loaded with persuasive intentions for sales promotion or other purposes.
Look at an example: “Romantic, Mysterious, Italian”. Three adjectives are put together, concise and sprightly, giving expression to deep connotation. Another example “Big thrills, Small bills”. This is an advertisement sponsored by the taxi center. Anyone enjoys the excitement to the largest extent as long as paying the less money. The word “big” stands in total contrast to the word “small”, the end syllable of the word “thrills’ and “bills” remains same, which creates a sense of rhythm. The cases below also explain the ideas above well.
(1) Look again. A lifetime of perfect coordination. (CUSTOM EYES from Revlon)
(2) Let the New York Times find you.
(3) The benefit of foresight, the world in 1993.
(4) So much flavor that you’ll never miss your high “tar cigarette.”[6]
3. Fuzziness
From the advertisements in section 2.2,we can easily find that some unclear and vague expressions exist in the language of advertising. And the following is going to make a brief introduction about fuzziness.
In our daily life, how many hairs must a man lose before he is determined to be bald? How many seconds make up a “moment”? How much money do you have to earn to be “rich”? When is a pile of sand a heap? We all agree that one grain of sand is not a heap but that a million grains is a heap. Somewhere in between the pile must change from “non-heap” to “heap”. These indeterminate concepts are hard to logically define, and usually are changed, as the variation of time, place and people groups. For example, “ She is a pretty girl.” Maybe we need not to know how beautiful she is, just in order to convey useful information “She is pretty.” Thus, vague statements are provided where a more precise statement is called for sometimes. Most importantly, humans seem to be able to communicate quite well using vague terms.
Paul Therous ever trenchantly said, “Language is deceptive, and though English is subtle, it also allows a clever person with one alert to the ambiguities of English to play tricks with mock precision and to combine vagueness with politeness. English is perfect for diplomats and lovers.” Lakoff in his work also said, “ Some of the most interesting job is to make things fuzzier or less fuzzy. ” [7] Indeed, accuracy and determinacy of language occurs in the extreme, while uncertain and inaccurate language is often found here and there. Just based on the existence of uncertain objects and vague ideas, fuzzy language came into being. In spite of the unclearness, we seldom challenge the speaker to an exact explanation of the subject in question since these expressions are understandable and communicative enough in most cases. Thus, we can say, this intrinsic uncertainty in natural language is called fuzziness or vagueness .The following two definitions will help us have a clear mind of fuzziness.
Max Black wrote in his Language and
Philosophy that “Vagueness consists in the existence of objects concerning, which it is intrinsically impossible to say either the symbol in question does, or does not, apply”. [8] While Crystal defines fuzziness as a term derived from mathematics and used by some linguists to refer to the indeterminacy involved in the analysis of a linguistic unit or pattern. For example, several lexical items, it is argued, are best regarded as representing a semantic cat
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