浅析双关语在商业英语广告中的应用

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摘 要

本文主要研究双关语在商业英语广告中的应用。随着经济的不断发展,商品市场的竞争也越来越激烈,在这个没有硝烟的战场上,商业广告无疑是商家最得力的武器。商业广告的功能包括：提供信息、争取顾客、保持需求、扩大市场以及确保质量。为了达到广告的预期效果，广告语言运用了多种修辞手段。双关作为其中较为常见的种修辞手段，诠释了现代英语广告的艺术和魅力。本文在概述了双关语基本概念后，通过列举英语广告实例，简要分析广告英语修辞手法双关的种类和应用，探讨双关语在广告语中备受青睐的原因，以及广告语篇中双关这种修辞方法的作用和效果。

关键词：广告；商业英语；语言修辞；双关语

Contents

1. Introduction……………………………………………………………1
2. Literature Review……………………………………………………2
3. Functions of Pun in Business Advertisements………………………...3

3.1 The Pragmatic Functions of Puns ………………………………………3

3.2 Glamour of Puns……………………………………………………4

3.3 Ambiguity…………………………………………………………….5

1. The Categories and Applications of Puns…………………………….6
2. Conclusion………………………………………………………………..9

Works Cited……………………………………………………………...11

1. Introduction

Advertisement is a rich product of the rapid social and economic development. With new products and services springing up endlessly in our daily life, advertisement, has penetrated through every aspect of our life and has played an inestimable role. In order to achieve the goal of business in the form of art, advertising language symbol system needs to contain the meaning associated with inner information in the form at the same time(Cheng Wei,2013:3). Advertisement invention is not only an economic activity to bring new services or commodity to people but also a cultural integration. It is like an invisible hand which controls people"s lifestyles and consumption habits.

How to understand and use English advertisement properly and how to make its purpose well-known has currently become a problem. On one hand, the final aim of English advertisement requests its language to be simple, novel and direct to attract customer’s attention and arouse their desire,and also create conviction in the competitive market. On the other hand, the principle requires that it needs to show the most complex meaning in the fewest words. In fact, a simple ad should include many figures of speech in order to improve their products or services while establishing a good corporate image. Therefore, advertisement inventors always think deliberately and carefully about the using of new, unique vocabularies, concise sentences and smart rhetoric devices to make a strong impression on consumers because puns can arouse echo in people heart. A pun is widely used in the advertising language vocabulary, syntax and pronunciation. Advertising designers use people"s background applied in the advertisement pun ably and take the initiative to cater to the public which makes the languages vivid and full of appeal(Gao Shan, 2014:125).The most commonly used strategy is to use popular proverbs, idioms or centuries knowledge, making the audience think of the related concepts of this knowledge and interpreting its connotation successfully. Mastering the skills of using puns can make the language more vivid and humorous and implicitly express the content of the advertisement. The diversification of ads requires the use of the advertising language more refined, remarkable and rich-skilled, which makes the advertising products attractive. The good brand image effectively enables consumers to produce consumption desire.

2. Literature Review

Pun in Dictionary of English Language is defined as “a witticism, involving the use of a word with more than one meaning, or of words having the same, or nearly the same sound but different meanings”(Wang Jing,2012:178).Generally speaking, “a pun is the saying of one word or sentence that contains more than one meaning. Pun can be regarded as a kind of word game and is illustrated in advertisements.”

Pun has two main features. The first feature of puns is polysemy in semantic level. It refers to the individual language having two or more than two kinds of cognitive languages. For example:“ What kinds of money do girls like the most?” -- Matrimony. The mony’s pronunciation is similar to the word “money”, this is seen as a homophones pun. Another important feature of pun is double context. For example,when people sitting in a restaurant asked: “Do you serve spirits here?” The waiter said: “Sure, sit down, we serve anybody.” It is clear that the customer and the waiter have their own speaking background environment.

Considering that this is an important role and service to attract the audience"s attention and persuade people to accept the products, more and more studies have been carried out to advertising language. Considering the universality of puns in advertisements，the research of them has an important realistic significance. On the one hand, it will provide a theoretical framework and guiding principles to advertisers and help them make better applications of puns in advertisements. On the other hand, the audience can benefit from the research for a better understanding of puns in advertisements. In addition, this study may help arouse people’s interest in puns in advertising，and encourage them to join in this meaningful advertising application.

Relevance theory, proposed by Sperber and Wilson in the mid-1980s, is the basis of the correct understanding of semantics and any language exchanged to communicate is a process of searching for optimal relevance principle. It is theoretical hypotheses are also appropriate for pun interpretation, by analyzing puns in this study, we find that the pun interpretation seems more complicated due to its specific features. The speaker need to express his ideas clearly and the listener need to understand the conversation in both sides of the cognitive context environment. So optimal relevance can grasp the true meaning of the utterance to get the communicative purpose.

1. Functions of Pun in Business Advertisements

Pun can meet various demands of advertisement in all aspects and add a lot of color for English advertisement. It not only can help advertisers emphasize the characteristics of products, but also make a number of consumers or buyers come into notice. The various principles of puns in advertisement with humor, novelty and thought-provoking pragmatic functions,violating the cooperative principle , excites consumers’ interest and desire of buying goods.

3.1 The pragmatic functions of puns in English advertisements

The world today is turbulent and people of all countries need live in a caring and compassionate social environment. Therefore, this desire is often reflected in advertisements. A rich connotation of advertising not only sell products directly to consumers, but also make consumers understand the national culture from it, and thus indirectly to carry forward the spirit and culture of the nationality. Pun can promote products and play a warning role by the public service advertisements. As a matter of fact, there is no lack of language with good intention reflecting humanity in advertisements language when you carefully observe it. For example, Dying to meat you? In the poster advertisements is a bloody falling black bird. This advertisement is made by the animal protectors for protecting animals. They use thought-provoking picture and creative issues to warn people not to eat wild animals any longer. “Meat” is converted from a noun into a verb which means “Let someone eat meat.” It reveals precisely the theme that people kill animals just to satisfy their appetite. It has the same pronunciation with “meet”, so they form homophonic puns. “Dying to meat you?” indicates the Animal protectors’ indignation and sympathy. In addition, they hope to wake up those people who are hunting or eating wild animals to stop their action and protect animals together because they are our friends.

Promoting the brand in English advertising in pun words is another effect. The name of the enterprise was incorporated as a word into the promotional language in advertising language, making consumers deepen the impression for the enterprise when see the advertisement. Enriching emotional content of advertisements is another effective means to remind people of ads. For example, OIC. This glasses advertisement provides very simple information, but obviously violates the principles of quantity(Zeng Guoxiu amp;Ji Meijie,2014:273).Advertising audience will use “principles“ to deduce the conversational implicature of this advertisement. “Oh, I see.” This advertising language means that you can see clearly in this glass because the purpose of a commercial advertisement is persuading customers into purchasing products. Besides, the advertisements with puns are easy to arouse people’s interest by making them associate the relevant things and tempt people to buy what advertisers are propagating. So pun is a notable character of English advertisement. However, it is an essential device to attract and retain audience’s attention because people will have a more profound and lasting memory with a certain emotion according to the relevant data . Therefore, advertising creative can deepen the memory effectively from this perspective.

With the development of society, people"s ideas and concepts open much more than before,however, there are still a lot of topics and vocabulary we try not to mention in our daily life.During the process of creating this kind of advertising, avoiding some taboo words to achieve the purpose of advertising is the first problem we must solve. For example, “After you get married，kiss your wife in Places she’s never been kissed before. ”This is an ad for condom. There is no doubt that we all need a social environment full of love and care.

3.2 Glamour of Puns

English advertisement, as a kind of special language form, can get instant results and is full of strong persuasion. Its emphasis is to help people grasp the advantages and value of commodities or services so that people would be willing to buy the products. Therefore, its information must be concise, clearly, humorous and unforgettable.

It is very essential for English advertisements to be concise. Because the complicated advertisement makes people lose their patience, while pun can solve this problem easily without difficulty. We can have a clear understanding by taking“A sound way to learn English”as an example. This is a tape advertisement. “Sound” here is a pun with two meanings: “something that can be heard” as a noun and “good” as an adjective. So we can easily find out the implication of this advertisement. It is really filled with art and wit.

In advertising process, advertisers in order to satisfy people"s curiosity from the heart, often consciously create new words or hot points to stimulate consumers in consumption.For example,losing weight is a fashionable topic in the world and is the ultimate goal concerned by the fashionable women. In order to appeal to the psychology of these women, they make every effort to promote their products to them.

In western world, humor is one of the important personal qualities through making friends. Humor can win the applause of others or to get out of the embarrassing dilemma when communicating with others. In many cases, outgoing, witty, funny people behave quite popular, so this phenomenon is also penetrated in the advertising.There is no exception in English advertisement.For example, Better late than the late. This is a public advertisement to remind drivers to drive safely, which originated in an English proverb: “Better late than never”, “Late”is a pun, apart from its original idea, “the late” is also “the dead”. The advertisers are to warn of the serious consequences because of ignoring the traffic rules by using it. It is a classic example using puns humorously in English advertisement.

In the real use of language, the characteristics of puns in advertisements often has the value of aesthetics. This aesthetic value can be reflected through language form and image form.Puns can also give people some certain enjoyment of aesthetics in the practical application of the language in English advertisements.For example,“Give your hair a touch of spring.” This is an advertisement of shampoo. “Spring” means “the color of spring” and also implies “the elasticity of the hair”. “A touch of spring” may stimulate the people’s imagination hair is full of vigor and energy as flexible as waterfalls so that it can arouse their resonance.Western society always prefers and captures the surprise.

People like to present themselves by various means, just as to attract others’ attention through the mass and there is no exception in business advertisements, the advertisers often adopt an original approach to satisfy people ’s curiosity deliberately. Besides, puns’ unique role is also fully displayed.For example, Create a wok of art in 8 minutes flat. This is the advertisements of Tyson cookers, the writer cleverly use the homophonic pun“wok” and “work”. “Wok of art” actually means “works of art”, but we can think it as exquisite dishes here. The replacement of “wok” from “work” cleverly links between the meaning conveyed and the advertised products . To some extent, the application of pun can satisfy customers’ curiosity and produce a profound impression.

3.3Ambiguity

From the above analysis , we can know that puns bring a lot of glamour to English advertisement so that advertisements are filled with jocosity, humor, implication. However, we also must pay attention to the misuse of puns in English advertisement, especially when we make a foreign trade because different countries have different cultures,customers and religions.Traditional linguistics thinks that when an expression with two kinds of meaning is ambiguous for causing misunderstanding. When people in each level, they have to try to avoid language ambiguity in communication. In traditional view, people put ambiguity as a kind of language misuse. However, with the emerging development of pragmatics in the 60s and 70s of the 20th century, pragmatic ambiguity becomes an important topic in linguists study(Min Zuchuan, 2013:119).Ambiguity can play a positive role in helping people to know about certain information from a certain words of appreciation and communication purposes.

If we can reasonably understand and use the ambiguity, we can not only level up English, but also can make our language more interesting and vivid . Pun is the language used in the most common ambiguity in a magical effect. Puns in oral communication often use phonological ambiguity and semantic ambiguity to obtain special effects.For example,John:“ Why can’t a bike stand by itself ?”Mike: “I don’t know，why?” John: “Because it’s two-tired．”

4 The Categories and Applications of Puns

Pun in advertising can be briefly divided into four categories: homophonic puns, semantics puns, grammar puns and idiom pun.

4.1 Homophonic Pun

Homophonic pun refers to using the same or similar pronunciation but different word to express the original ideal. The pun can not only add a sense of humor, but also attract consumers" attention to get the purpose of promotional products.

For example, “Up2U” .This is a famous cosmetics ads and the “up to you” refers to “beauty by your own”, so it is very persuasive.

For example, The Car in Front is a Toyota. The ad uses the polysemy of The Front: one is front; second is leading(Zhao Jing, 2013:169).The first layer of meaning in the context of normal conversation seems like the description of the car brand. After seeing the advertisement, consumers can easily grasp the pun meaning of the word “front”—— Toyota is ahead of the whole car industry. So this company set up the brand image quality in an implicative and humor way.

4.2 Semantic pun

Semantic pun refers to using a word ambiguity of pun in a certain environment. There is only one word in the literal, but in fact it has two different meanings at the same time, resulting in a tactful, artistic conception, enhancing the effect of language.

For example, “A deal with us means a good deal to you” .The Coca-Cola Company in the AD ingeniously made use of “a good deal” of double meaning “a good deal” and “many”, constituting a wonderful semantic pun. It means that consumers benefit a lot at the same time.

For example, “A better stretch for the long stretch” .This is an advertisement of airlines taking the two meanings of stretch: big space and comfortably stretch. The AD let you know that the airline is a good choice if you want to travel for long distances, because there is enough space on the plane to let you sit well.

For example, “The choice of a new generation”.This is Pepsi’s new products’ advertisement.“Please select a new generation of products, this is a new generation’s choice .”young man, of course, are difficult to block the temptation.

4.3 Grammar Pun

Grammar pun refers to using some words that have more than one part of speech or grammatical functions.

For instance, “Coke refreshes you like no other can”. Here “can” have two parts of speech, one is a modal verb, means “can”, the other is a noun, referring to the filling beverage. The AD intends to tell you this kind of cola can make you refreshing, restore energy, other drinks “filling” but not “can”.

4.4 Idiom Pun

Idiom pun is referred to some sentences imitating famous sayings and these sentences obviously have conventional form of language.

For example, “Tasting is believing”, obviously this is an imitation of“Seeing is believing” in a word, and it is for food advertisements. These ads are easy to be understood and remembered.

For example, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away ”is a familiar idiom, but here is the apple computer brand, the Ad’s message to the people is together with my apple computer, there will be no trouble.

“All is well that ends well.” The cigarette advertisement is a paraphrase of the original idiom “all that ends well”.

4.1.5 Mixed Pun

Sometimes phonetic pun and semantic pun can be combined to the appeal of languages.

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