Abstract and Key Words

Abstract: Advertising is a common means in modern society to give information, mostly to promote products and services. The language used in advertising is full of various pragmatic strategies. Based on Grice’s (1975) cooperative principle and the related four maxims, this paper analyzes how violation of these principles produces various implicatures by looking at some examples of advertisements. It is proposed that violation of various maxims can help increase the decoding difficulty, extend the decoding time, raise the decoding appeal, lengthen the attentive time and thus, add charm to the advertisement.

Key words: English advertising; conversational implicature; cooperative principle

摘要:“广告”是现代社会中一种常见的推广商品的宣传手段, 也是极富语用策略的语言现象。 本文从美国语言学家格赖斯(1975)提出的“合作原则”理论出发，通过分析众多优秀广告，指出广告商通过巧妙违反“合作原则”使广告产生“会话含意”，增加广告的解码难度，因而增添解码情趣，以引起消费者的注意，最终达到出售所宣传产品或者服务的目的

关键词：英语广告；会话含义；合作原则

1. Introduction:
A French scholar Kelang Lou Beyer once said: “The air we breathe consists of oxygen, nitrogen and advertisement.” Although his words are exaggerated, he places emphasis on advertisement which plays an important role in our real life. The creativity in advertisement is not to slander other products directly but to hide the information that is going to be transmitted in the advertising language, giving the concrete linguistic environment for the consumer to infer the implication. Good language in advertising tells its audience information about a product, and can always grab the consumer's eyeball, stimulating their desire for consuming. As a form of language combining sound, words and pictures, whether advertisement language can become a bridge between a product and its consumers lies in whether the customers can understand the language. Creative use of language in advertisement which shows advertisers’ inspiration and intelligence often makes use of conversational implicature which often creates an unexpected effect. Analyzing the language used in advertisements in terms of Grice’s conversational implicature may help us understand and appreciate the special type of language use better.
 This paper tries to explain and analyze the conversational implicature in English advertisement on the basis of Grice’s cooperative principle. It is hoped that the discussion and analysis can help readers better understand such language.