The researches of English advertisements began in the 1980s and have been existed for more than 20 years。 Many scholars have approached the studies from different perspectives which include stylistics, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, semiotics, communication and so on。 They have made great contributions to the analysis of English advertisements, but because of the complexity of English advertisements, these researches are usually not further enough, so there is still a long way for us to go in this field。

1。2。 The Previous Works

English advertising language, as a special language register, has its unique characteristics, which limits the choices of its research methods and increases the difficulties of conducting researches in this field。 The author will review the previous works by other scholars in the following。

1。2。1。 The Classification of English Advertisements

According to different standards of classification, English advertisements can be classified differently。 Guy Cook (1992) specifies four criterions to classify advertising in his book The Discourse of Advertising。 The four criterions are medium, target audience, geography, and purpose or function。 In terms of medium, it can be print advertising, broadcast advertising, video advertising, out-of-home advertising, direct-mail advertising, and internet advertising。 On the basis of target audience, it can be pided into business advertising and consumer advertising。 According to geographic area, it can be fall into national advertising, international advertising, local advertising and regional advertising。 According to the purpose of advertising, there are six types of English advertising: product & non-product advertising，commercial & non-commercial advertising，and action & awareness advertising。

1。2。2。 Researches from Perspectives of Stylistics, Sociolinguistics, Pragmatics and Semiotics

In researches from the perspective of stylistics, Leech’s English in advertising (1966) is the earliest and classic book studying advertising language。 In this book, the stylistic approach which is featured as its descriptive nature is well represented。 The research which is conducted by Leech describes the vocabulary and structures of English advertisements successfully, but it fails to interpret “why”。 And he does not give a definite answer to questions like how the language of advertising is understood by consumers and how it is related to the social context。 

In researches from the perspective of sociolinguistics, Vestergaard & Schroder’s The Language of Advertising (1985) is the representative work。 They have examined the language in printed advertising and related advertising language structures to advertising functions, that is, the informational function and the persuasive function。 They have succeeded in accomplishing the task of describing advertising language structures, but they fail to explore further the social impetuses that lie behind particular types of advertising, and advertising’s social repercussions, in other word, they still have one problem remained to solve, how the message of advertising is conveyed to customers。论文网

    In researches from the perspective of pragmatics, Tanaka Keico, a Japanese female author, is the first linguist who endeavors to study in this field。 In 1994, she published Advertising Language—A Pragmatic Approach to Advertisement in Britain and Japan。 She says in the foreword of her book, “the main purpose of this study is to give an adequate analysis of the language of written ads in Britain and Japan … and to explain how communication occurs between the advertiser and audience。” (Tanaka, 1994) However, though Tanaka applies Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance Theory to analyze the thesis, readers cannot find exhaustive analysis of the written advertising language and the detailed description of structural rules in this book。 She does not complete the first purpose of those two purposes she just put forward。