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PRAGMATIC EFFECT OF BOULOMAIC TEXT-WORLDS IN COMMERCIAL ADVERTISING
Abstract
The article focuses on pragmatic effects of boulomaic text-worlds as a variety of modal worlds created in advertising discourse. Text-worlds are treated as a type of pragmatically-orientated representational structures of advertising discourse establishing and maintaining relationships between agent and client as main discourse participants. The paper presents an element of a broader World-Modelling Concept [7] one of the contemporary theories of discourse representation based on Text World Theory initially developed by Semino [12], Werth [15], Gavins [2], and then expanded on contemporary theoretical approaches of Russian scholars such as Kubryakova, Dem'yankov [5]. The pragmatic effects of boulomaic text-worlds are analyzed with the machinery of the named theory to unravel discourse power enabling advertising agents to influence the opinions of the target audience. Boulomaic text-worlds are textualized through different lexico-grammatical realizations. In this study it is shown that verbs want, wish and hope are commonly employed by agents of discourse to express boulomaic modality, including descriptions of wishes, desires, and fantasies of both the agent and the client. It is argued that within the range of modal text-worlds created in advertising, boulomaic text-worlds are used to articulate the hidden desires and wishes of the potential customers and stimulate them buy the promoted products. It is noted that the agent of advertising discourse has consumerism ideology behind the linguistic expressions he uses. The pragmatic effects of boulomaic text-worlds represented by lexical verbs are discussed from the point of the construal of mental representations in which the relations between the product, the client, and the producer conform to what the relevant person desires.
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