This book examines the persuasive potential of advertisements within the context of reception studies from a socio-cognitive and linguistic perspective. It is concerned with the exploration of what is involved in the sense making practices of advertising and how they are realized by means of linguistic devices. With an analysis of advertisements that cite well-known paintings, this book investigates the socio-cognitive resources that are activated in the interpretive process of advertisements and discusses how the attitudinal disposition and cognitive mechanisms involved are actualized in linguistic structures.

This book is composed of five chapters. It begins with the brief introduction of the research on reception and discourse in chapter 1. In this chapter, the research background and relevant important issues are briefly discussed in order to provide a general reference for further discussion in the subsequent chapters. Chapter 2 is devoted to subtopics including reception, language and sense-making. In this chapter, the relevant cognitive and linguistics concepts are elaborated to elicit the relationship between reception, language and sense-making. In particular, the notion of social cognition is addressed to develop a theoretical framework which combines theories of social-cognitive discourse analysis with the study of language from a functional perspective, with a focus on evaluation. Chapter 3 investigates evaluation in advertising reception. In this chapter, the notions of recontextualization and hybridity of media texts, and advertising are presented, so as to provide a context to the use of art in advertising. Then, advertisements used as stimulus materials, and the methods of data analysis are described for the further discussion. In order to give a comprehensive account of the data, the context of the production of the advertisements is addressed in focus group discussions. How appraisal is identified, coded and analyzed in the spoken data is thoroughly illustrated with a description of the appraisal categories. Then, it is followed by a discussion of the socio-cognitive resources inferred from the data and an illustration of how they can be identified. Chapter 4 discusses the discourse of advertising reception. It presents the appraisal analysis results and their interpretation from a socio-cognitive perspective. The data coding and analysis of two focus groups are described. Each focus group is analyzed from two aspects. First, the appraisal findings from the data are presented following each appraisal subcategory, that is, affect, appreciation and judgment. Then, an in-depth exploration of the conceptual models is given, which are considered to underlie the evaluations of each advertisement. Chapter 5 is concerned with implications for a theory of evaluation in adverting reception. In this chapter, implications for both discourse analysis and advertising practices are given a thorough treatment, based on the main data findings. In addition, methodological implications for reception studies are mentioned. The book contributes to the fields of appraisal theory, socio-cognitive discourse analysis and advertising practices, rendering it a significant addition to these research fields. In a word, this book is a very readable one not just for linguistics scholars, but also for advertisers who intend to improve the effect of their advertisements.