Intertextual Analysis of Rhetorical Devices in Advertising

Introduction

Advertising is a prominent genre in virtually all contemporary societies. It is closely connected with social economy, enterprise development, market exploitation, foreign trade and people’s daily life. It is ubiquitous and widely disseminated through newspapers, magazines, journals, television, radios, posters, etc. We may be often annoyed by advertisements, however, sometimes we may find them exceedingly useful. Anyway, advertisements have played and are playing an important role in this commercial era.

To persuade the consumers to purchase the commodity, to make people remember its brand, or to persuade them to watch or do something, the advertisements must possess the selling power--- the desire of purchasing the commodity; and the advertisements need have the merit --- memory value, which refers to the effect of the advertisements that can impress the consumers a lot and make them remind of the good qualities and advantages of the promoted product. In other words, the successful advertisements must catch the consumers’ eyes with the attention value and readability. Thus, the advertisers usually adopt various strategies to achieve this. The intertextual techniques are what a lot of advertisers prefer to use. The application of intertextuality in advertising can skillfully hint the quality of the promoted product, stimulate the readers to think about the things related to the product and shorten the distance between the product and the readers.

Intertextuality means a web of interdependence in which the interpretation of each text relies on other texts. Texts in advertising are viewed as lacking in any kind of independent meaning. So far, there are a lot of research to discuss the forms and functions of inter...

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