Arousing the receiver's involvement by flouting the communicative principles

Abstract

In this paper we examine the addresser's attempt at gaining the addressee's attention towards his message. The field chosen for the investigation is the language of advertising, and more particularly one of its effective, although not widely used, strategies: humour. The hypothesis we put forward is that humour arises as a consequence of flouting the communicative rules. In this way, readers may develop a feeling of solidarity with the advertiser for being daring or interesting, and above all for letting them' in the know'. Thus the use of humour is studied as a persuasive tactic.