Implicatures Derived through Maxim Flouting in Print Advertising. A Contrastive Empirical Approach

Abstract

Advertising communication relies considerably on inferences and assumptions which help proceed towards eventual interpretation(s). Conversational implicatures (CI) remain a a persistently exploited pragmantic device in advertising since they represent inferences that go beyond the literal meaning of the utterance, arising from hearer/reader assuming that speaker/advertiser is being cooperative and are  "more likely to  be remembered than direct assertions" (Brewer and Lichtenstein, 1975). By examining the essence of CI, the types of Cooperative Maxims flouted (quantity, quality, manner, relevance) and the devices employed in English and Romanian print advertising such as tautologies, unfinished comparisons, metaphoric expression, the paper will present the nature of  advertising inferences at copy level as well as insights from contrastive statistical data at headline level.