Pragmatics in Advertisements

蔡佩穎 Jennifer 593202060 吳宛妮 Wenny 593202096 陳雅琪 Alicia 593202149 黃藍瑩 Linda 593202151 洪鈺婷 Sandra 593202278 古家禎 Ammee 593202436 徐君汝 Sherry 593202448

Group Member

Situational Context: Speech Acts in the advertisement, there is a slogan: 我要把你身體

裡面的光引出來｡ It is a performative verb of speech acts. The obvious evidence is the key words “I would like to”. It is kind of pronounce. In fact, there is not any light inside women’s body. However, by wearing this kind of necklace, every woman becomes a shinning star, and everyone will fix their eyes on you. You are a cynosure. You will become more attractive and beautiful.

Situational Context: Maxims of Conversation In the advertisement, first, we heard the

leading lady said that: It’s nice! Actually, she not only admired the necklace, but also wanted to buy it. It’s situational context of pragmatics. However, the leading man also said to the lady: You have a date with me here, I know that. What should the leading man know? That’s because Valentine’s Day is coming, the man knew he should buy a necklace for the lady as a gift. The best one is that necklace which she had chosen.

Deixis

DHL Advertisement

CompetitionBad for them Good for you

Advertisement Slogan

In the movie, we can see the competition is between UPS and FedEx.At the end, the slogan: Competition bad for them, which refer to Ups and FedEx.This is about situational context. If the advertisement doesn't show the car racing between Ups and FedEx, we won’t understand what “them” the advertisement refers to.The last phrase, good for you, refers to two group. One group is people who choose DHL express, and that the words DHL wants to tell their customers. Another One refers to DHL themselves. In the movie, we know that competition is bad for UPS and FedEx, because they failed to delivery the goods on time. And that’s good for DHL which get advantage from the competition. Last phrase is about Deixis, Because After we see the movie, we know that what “you” refers to customers and DHL in the advertisement.

Pronouns

In this CF, they told us about what happened to our hair if we wouldn’t take care of them. Our hair would be prong and break. Using their condition product will penetrate our hair. Our hair won’t be harmful.

We can find out a example about the pronoun in this CF.

When the speaker told that: That’s it penetrate into your hair. It can represent a object or something else. In this movie, we can explain it as the condition product which make your hair more flexile.

Speech Acts

Verbs like bet, promise, warn, pronounce, etc, they are performative verbs. And in this advertisement, there is a sentence, 保證一日之內到府安裝 , it uses the verb “promise”. So it is a typical performative sentence.

In this advertisement, the Chinese sentence ” 給我小心點” belongs to one of speech acts- illocutionary act. In the Chinese sentence “ 給我小心一點” , “ 給我” has a warning meaning. In this advertisement, the man doesn't use the word ”warning” to warn the girl be careful; however, “ 給我小心一點” still arrives effect on warning.

Conclusion about Speech Acts Every speech act sentence which

presents words and deeds, it must have a performative verb. And there are usually three necessary factors in a speech act sentence. The first is there must be a performative verb in the sentence. Second is the subject must be the first person. And the third one is the tense must be present.