论文总字数：28287字

摘 要

广告英语作为一种独特的应用语篇，以其独特的语言，体现出较强的艺术感染力和社会经济效益以及实用性，而这一定程度上取决于修辞的应用。修辞为广告表达效果的增加提供了强有力的支撑，使其更具生动性，艺术性以及感染性。为了达到实用功利目的，人们越来越注重广告语中修辞的运用。本文对广告以及广告英语进行了粗浅的分析介绍，将分析重点放在拟人修辞格上。以可口可乐等品牌广告为例，本人选取了运用拟人和其他修辞手法的多则广告，同时选取并组织了几位朋友观看，并对他们的感受进行总结对比，随之比较出广告是否运用拟人修辞所产生的效果差异。通过对大量的实例以及观众的感受总结，对英语拟人修辞格及其类型进行简单分析，并分析概括了其在广告英语中的应用效果，总结出拟人修辞格在广告英语中四种常见的应用形式。与此同时将拟人修辞格在广告英语中的应用效果分为赋予产品广告人情味与赋予产品广告生命力和艺术感染力两大类。在充分展现拟人修辞格在广告中的独特魅力的同时，使人们对广告英语的有了较为深刻的认识。

关键词：广告英语； 拟人修辞格；应用效果

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 1

2.1 Advertising and advertising English 1

2.2 English personification figures of speech and their types 2

2.2.1 To use verbs, adjectives and other adjectives to describe things 4

2.2.2 To use personal pronouns to refer to "things" 5

2.2.3 To apply the terms suitable for "people" to "things" 6

2.2.4 To call the object as a “person" 6

3. Research Methods 6

4. The Application effect of personified rhetoric in Advertising English 7

4.1 To give product advertising human interest through personification figures of speech 7

4.2 To give product advertising vitality and artistic appeal through personification figures of speech 9

5. Conclusion 10

Works Cited 11

1. Introduction

With the increasingly fierce commercial competition, advertising English has attracted more and more attention due to its unique role, strong artistic appeal and social and economic benefits. As a product of fierce competition and elaborate design by designers, advertising English is not only extremely rich in the use of language and sentence patterns, but also extremely exquisite in the use of rhetoric. The use of rhetoric makes the advertising English language concise and elegant, vivid, humorous and harmonious, full of fun and aesthetic feeling. The use of rhetoric also makes advertising English full of strong rhythm and appeal, as well as rich expressive ability and expressive effect, which will help it move towards the future better. In commodity publicity, proper use of various rhetoric can better establish the product image and highlight the best characteristics of the product. It is helpful to improve the reputation of the product and deepen its impression in the minds of consumers, so as to achieve a better persuasion function and stimulate consumers" desire to buy products. The personification rhetoric is one of the most commonly used rhetorical devices in English advertisements. Through the understanding of personification rhetoric, we can better appreciate and understand what excellent and successful English advertisements are, and realize their striking and intriguing artistic effects. At the same time, it can also inspire domestic enterprises to design and apply English advertisements in order to win the love and trust of consumers better.

2. Literature Review

2.1Advertising and advertising English

The so-called advertisement, understood from the literal meaning of Chinese, is “to inform the public”, that is, to inform the public of something, or to advise the public to abide by a certain regulation. The word advertising originated from Latin Adventure, which has the meaning of propagating products and attracting public attention. The original meaning is “I yell and yell”, and later evolved into English advertisement. Advertise, which means “one person notices something ", and later evolved into "causing others" attention and notifying others of something." Until the end of the 17th century, the United Kingdom began a large-scale commercial activity, when the term advertising was widely popularized and used. At this time, the "advertising" refers not only to one advertisement but to a series of advertising activities. (Wang, 4)

With the accelerated pace of reform and opening up and the increasing economic globalization, international brands and imported goods have entered in the Chinese market. Commodity advertisements have infiltrated into people"s lives, and English advertisements can be seen everywhere in daily life. The influx of foreign advertisements has also made it an important source for Chinese enterprises and consumers to obtain information on commodity economy. With the continuous acceptance of foreign language education and the deepening attention paid to it in China, more and more Chinese people begin to understand English advertisements consciously. Advertising develops with each passing day. But no matter how it develops, its most effective means of expression is language. Because advertising requires concise language, vivid image, distinctive features and unique artistic beauty, it must fully convey product information and establish a successful brand image while satisfying people"s material and cultural needs. Therefore, in order to enhance the effect of language expression, making the language more convincing and leaving a deep impression on consumers, great attention must be paid to the aesthetic feeling and artistry of language. This requires the extensive application of rhetoric in advertising English. Appropriate use of rhetoric techniques can effectively propagate the characteristics of commodities, disseminating commodity information, increasing the interest and vividness of advertisements, making commodities better publicized, and arousing the association of consumers, so as to achieve the purpose of publicizing and promoting commodities.

Advertising master Raymond Robbie once said: "The best sign of superior advertising is that it not only enables viewers to compete for the purchase of its products, but also enables viewers and the advertising industry to use it as a fascinating masterpiece for a long time."(cf. Yu, 94) This shows that what advertisers need to do is to enhance the appeal and artistry of the advertisement, so that it has a long-lasting charm. The application of various rhetorical techniques is the key to enhancing the charm of advertising language, realizing the purpose of commercial promotion, and achieving the function of conciseness. The success of many foreign advertisements fully shows us how to use a variety of rhetorical devices to impress people with a few but refined and concise languages.

2.2 English personification figures of speech and their types

Wang Dechun and others once said, "Rhetoric is a language form with special rhetoric effect formed by creative use of the national language in a specific context. (Wang, 27). Then we can be sure that no matter what rhetoric we use, the ultimate goal is to create a good brand image, so as to promote product sales. In this paper, the personification rhetoric is selected as the research object among many rhetoric devices. Taking Coca-Cola and other well-known brand advertising slogans as examples, several advertisement audiences are randomly selected in our lives. By viewing the selected advertisements, they fill in their feelings about whether using personification rhetoric in advertising slogans or not and its after-effect through questionnaires. I analyze and summarize the results of the survey so as to get the final conclusion of the survey.

Among many figures of speech, personification figures of speech are those that deliberately write things as human beings, personify things, and endow some behavioral characteristics of human beings to ordinary things, thus endowing nonhuman things with human spirituality, emotion and feeling. The application of personification method in advertisement is to personify the commodities promoted, endow them with human feelings and personalities, make the cold commodities have human feelings and close the distance between them and consumers, thus making consumers have favorable impression on brand commodities, further generate consumption impulse, and finally achieve the goal of establishing brand image, selling commodities and promoting enterprises to succeed. For example, a watch advertisement: Time always follow me. Time goes hand in hand. The word "follow one"s shadow" personifies the watch, endows the watch with a kind of human nature and gives the watch human feelings. Here, the watch is compared to a human being and it accompanies you day and night like a shadow. This makes it easy for consumers to feel the care of love, thus naturally generating consumption impulses. This advertisement not only shows the durability of the brand watch, but also emphasizes the noble qualities of the watch: precision, leading and king style. Therefore, a good advertising language can influence the audience"s psychology in a subtle way and promote the brand to make further progress towards success. There is also a car advertisement: Even cold rolled steel can have a heart and soul. It can be translated that the cold body exudes a strong sense of affection. What we know is that only people have" heart and soul’. so here we personify cars and give them feelings, showing that although cars are made of steel, they still have deep feelings and kindness, creating a warm feeling, turning heartlessness into affection, and narrowing the distance between products and customers. The above two advertisements show us a lot of benefits brought by the successful application of personification. In many English advertisements that we come into contact with in our daily life, personification is applied to make the advertising language more vivid. It can be seen from this that the application of personification rhetoric can make static commodities dynamic, turn "dead commodities" into "living people", thus effectively reducing the wariness of the audience, mobilizing consumers" purchasing passion, and further achieving the purpose of promoting sales. However, the application of personification rhetoric in advertising English is not static. It can be divided into many situations. In the following, I will focus on the typical advertising slogans of famous brands as an example. Through the form of questionnaire mentioned above, the application and effect of personification rhetoric in advertising English are divided into the following types:

2.2.1 To use verbs, adjectives and other adjectives to describe things

Here, I will cite a few advertisements as examples.

1. Unlike me, my Rolex never needs relax. --- Rolex
2. Flowers by Interflora speak from the heart. ---Flower shop slogan (Flowers cultivated in the botanical gardens reflect people"s minds)
3. Opportunity knocks.---Real estate slogan (opportunity to knock)
4. Coke knows no reason.—Coca Cola
5. Born to run.—Automobile advertisement

In Example 1, the advertising creator wants to express that the watch is accurate and dynamic. It uses the word "rest" to remind people of themselves, and thus to close the gap between products and consumers. In Example 2, the word confession is suitable for describing people. Here, the flower is personalized that it can "speak from the heart". It means that you can use flowers to express your different emotions at different occasions, such as expressing birthday wishes, promotion blessing and so on. (Xu, 85-87) In Example 3, knocking on the door is an action that only people can do. The word "knock" is used here to express that buying a house can be regarded as an opportunity. It can be used to stimulate the enthusiasm of consumers to buy houses, and ultimately sellers can achieve the purpose of selling houses. Example 4 is an advertisement of Coca-Cola. "Know" is a human perception action, and here it is given to drinks, suggesting the functions and advantages of Coca-Cola. It has always accompanied customers and known their feelings, so it is easy to make consumers feel good and then consume. The advertisement in Example 5 can be translated as: born for running. It personalizes the car and shows the advantages of the product. The advertisement in Example 5 can be translated as follows: for running, it personalizes the car and shows the advantages of the product. At the same time, the word "run" can easily show consumers such a picture: the driver is in high spirits, like a horse running on the road, thus shorting the distance between the car and consumers. There are many other examples like this and we do not list one by one.

2.2.2 To use personal pronouns to refer to "things", such as:

Here, I will cite a few advertisements as examples.

1. She has her own spirit and it graces everyone she comes near. (Lauren)
2. It’s time for your lifetime.
3. I’m small, but I’m feisty. See my two outside compartments. They’ll expand instantly. I’ll become 50% bigger to bring back those sales meeting materials you. ---Lark travel bag

In Example 1, the personal pronoun "she" was used as a substitute for perfume. It emphasizes its subjectivity and brand characteristics, "everywhere it goes, everyone is more beautiful because of it", which is easy to make consumers move and attract their hearts to yearn for. The word "she" points to both the beauty of the advertisement and the perfume itself, so people naturally think that perfume is exclusively for women. In Example 2, the word "it" is used to replace the watch. The watch is personified, just like a person"s partner. It accompanies you day and night. While emphasizing the importance of the watch, it also shows the exquisite quality and durability of the brand watch. A simple advertisement word gives the product a human touch, which is also its success. In Example 3, it is claimed in the tone of "I". The slogan personalizes the travel bag and giving the travel bag people"s emotions and movements, At the same time, it shows the characteristics of its products to consumers in vivid language: large capacity, small occupied space, easy to carry and use. It caters to the needs of users while enhancing the vividness of advertisements..

2.2.3 To apply the terms suitable for "people" to "things"

I will take the following advertisements as examples:

1. Sophisticated sweet-to-drink Pink Lady
2. The best friend thirst ever had.

In Example 1, wine is called Pink Lady, which emphasizes the high quality of the wine and enables the advertisement to highlight the information it wants to convey. The language is very beautiful and fascinating (Ma, 30). The second example is an advertisement for Coca-Cola, which uses “best friend” to describe Coca-Cola, which shows that as a best friend, Coca-Cola can solve their thirst problems when consumers are thirsty. It is intended to express its thirst-quenching and refreshing effect. These advertisements are novel and unique, which endow drinks with vitality. This makes consumers feel good, and highlights their irreplaceable and worth owning, tempting consumers to buy this product.

2.2.4 To call the object as a “person"

Here I choose several typical advertisements as examples:

1. You’ve come a long way, baby. (Virginia slims)
2. She works while you rest. (Washing machine)

The first example is a cigarette advertisement. The word “baby” calls for smoke as a person, and uses “hard-won” to indicate the hardships from prohibiting women’s smoking to the fact that women can have their favorite cigarettes. This is the result of long-term efforts of the revolutionaries. It should be more cherished. The second example is a washing machine advertisement. The word “she” compares the washing machine to the hard-working housewife’s effective helper. It can share her laundry work, thus enhancing communication with consumers and bringing products and consumers closer. It directly shows that it can meet the needs of consumers, making them closer to each other, and finally inspiring consumers to buy the products.

3. Research Methods

I mainly take " What are the different effects of advertising English with or without personification rhetoric?" as the research question. The required data were collected through questionnaires and on-site interviews.

In the survey, we took Coca-Cola and other brand advertisements as examples, and organized several representative friends to express their audience feelings about the use of personification and other rhetorical devices. It is accomplished mainly by letting them write their impressions, making short evaluations and filling in questionnaires.

After further summarizing the results of the survey, we can draw the following conclusions: respondents said that they can better resonate with advertisements which use personification rhetoric. Compared with advertisements using parallelism and other rhetorical devices, the use of personification rhetoric can make them feel the artistic appeal of language and the vitality of products. Then it generates the impulse to consume.

4. The Application effect of personified rhetoric in Advertising English

Through research, the application effect of personification rhetoric in advertising English can be roughly divided into two categories: to give Product Advertising Human Interest through Personification Figures of Speech; to give Product Advertising Vitality and Artistic Appeal through Personification Figures of Speech. Next, we will summarize, analyze, and compare the feelings of our selected audience on whether anthropomorphic figures of speech are used in advertising English through typical examples. In this survey, we selected 20 friends in our life, and organized them to fill in relevant questionnaires. At the same time, we had a simple oral interview with them. Here, I have chosen three representatives. They are: Miss Song, a student representative; Mr. Zhang, a member of the working clan who has been working for about three years, and Mr. Wang, an elder. The following is my record of their three different feelings and my own survey results.

4.1 To give product advertising human interest through personification figures of speech

Advertisement 1: Oscar de la Renta knows what makes a woman beautiful. Advertisement 2: They will stay on the job longer than most employees. Advertisement 3: Who-ever you are, whatever you do, wherever you may be, when you think of refreshment, think of ice cold Coca-cola. - - Coca-Cola

In these three advertisements, Song, as a woman, said that when she saw the word "know", the advertisement immediately left an impression on her mind, and then she became curious about the product and had the idea to try. Zhang and Wang said that advertisement 1 and advertisement 2 used personification method, which made them feel more human and easy to generate emotional resonance. In the third advertisement, they all feel their strong sense of rhythm, which is more pleasant and catchy, but it may be slightly inferior in emotional aspects. Next, I will summarize and analyze the effects of the three advertisements and the feelings of the three audiences.

For example: Oscar de la Renta knows what makes a woman beautiful.

Oscar de la Renta is a cosmetic name in this advertisement. The word "know" personalizes skin care products. It knows how to make women beautiful and takes good care of their skin. The advertisement endows the product with human emotions and makes beauty-loving women fascinated by the skin care product, So that consumers can have resonance and achieve the ultimate sales purpose.

Another example: They will stay on the job longer than most employees. (Volvo Automobile Advertisement) It gives the "car" have people"s emotions, thinking and image, more patient and loyal than other employees, and fulfilling their duties, which shows the high quality of Volvo cars. A similar example is the Ford car"s advertisement: It handles the road as easily as it handles Mother Nature. There are many others like this. Because of the limited space, we will not list them all here.

In Advertisement 3: It uses parallelism. It gives people a kind of symmetrical beauty in sentence structure. The structure is neat, the tone is strong, the emotion is prominent, it has a strong infectivity. Parallelism not only highlights the product characteristics, but also shows the brand charm. “whatever, wherever, when” is more rhyming. This makes the advertisement read aloud, just like the dialogue of love. However, compared with the first two, this advertisement still needs to be considered in terms of giving the product a human touch.

4.2 To give product advertising vitality and artistic appeal through personification figures of speech

Here, I have chosen the following advertisements as examples

Advertisement 1: Why your skin drinks it down so quickly.

Advertisement 2: The Globe brings you the world in a single copy.

Advertisement 3: Things go better with Coca-cola

For the advertisements here, the three interviewees expressed the following views. Song and Zhang said that in Advertisement 1 and 2, personification rhetoric was used. The words drink and bring successfully endowed the commodity with vitality, strong appeal, and then generated the consumption impulse.Wang said that although the last advertisement exaggerated the characteristics of Coca-Cola, it also aroused people"s endless imagination and yearning. Based on the above views, I have made the following analysis of the three advertisements:

For example: Why your skin drinks it down so fast. (Magnolia oil advertisement)

In this advertisement, the skin is anthropomorphized, and the word drink vividly expresses the good effect of the product. It gives people a sense of picture and has a strong appeal, which can attract more customers to consume.

Another example: The Globe brings you the world in a single copy. This advertisement personifies the magazine. The word "bring" gives the magazine vitality and emotions. As long as you have this magazine, you can understand the whole world. This fully illustrates its richness, readability and great value. Its language is highly motivating. There are also advertisements from Reader"s Digest: The World, smiles, and Reader"s Digest.  (Guo 94) Reader"s Digest brings joy to the world, and it has the same effect.

In Advertisement 3: it uses the rhyme technique, although it exaggerates its efficacy, but it is not exaggerated. It still has credibility. On this basis, it also gives consumers a good imagination space. But compared with advertisement 1 and advertisement 2, which use personification rhetoric, it may be slightly worse in endowing the product with vitality and artistic appeal. Based on the above examples and a comparative summary of the audience"s feelings, we can see that the application of anthropomorphic figures of speech has great advantages in endowing products with vitality and artistry.

5. Conclusion

Although good advertising is rooted in good products and services, the persuasiveness of good advertising cannot be underestimated. The famous British linguist Geoffrey N. Leech once said: "The slogan must be vivid, eye-catching, readable, unforgettable and promotional" ( Leech, 1996: 27-30). In order to realize the ultimate goal of advertising, advertisement creators pay special attention to the use of various rhetorical devices that increase the artistic effect and practicability of language. However, through the extensive use of personification figures of speech, advertising English language can be made more concise and effective, vivid, highly infectious and expressive, thus making the advertised products more approachable, making consumers have a better impression on the products and even on the enterprise of the brand. It can further stimulate people"s imagination and finally make the goods get good publicity. In short, the proper use of personification rhetoric in advertising English can bring good results to the manufacturers, companies and enterprises that make propaganda. It brings them new vitality and new benefits, so as to gradually establish their own brand, and ultimately promote the further success of enterprises. In addition, learning to read and appreciate the advertising English language is also helpful to improve people"s aesthetic awareness and language expression ability. This paper makes a preliminary discussion on personification techniques in English advertisements. I hope it will be helpful for people to know more about advertising English.

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