On Features And Enlightenments Of Metadiscourse In English Commercial Advertisements

The concept of metadiscourse was firstly posed by Harris in1970, and it was developed by many scholars, who tried to give definitions to metadiscourse and divided metadiscourse elements into different categories. However, it was only recently that the definition and classification of metadiscourse given by Hyland won support from many experts, and many experts have used the classification of Hyland to do research in various fields. However, few experts have studied metadiscourse in English commercial advertisements.In view of the above, the writer has collected100printed English commercial advertisements from noted newspapers and magazines and another100Internet English commercial advertisements from well-known Internet websites, and conducted a comparative study on the features of the metadiscourse used inside. Moreover, by comparing printed English commercial advertisements with appropriated metadiscourse with those without and comparing the Internet English commercial advertisements with appropriated metadiscourse with those without, the writer analyzed the impacts of appropriately-used metadiscourse to the market efficacies of printed English commercial advertisements and Internet English commercial advertisements.Furthermore, the writer also designed a questionnaire, and passed50questionnaires to50foreigners who shopped in public places, and through their response to the questionnaire, the writer has analyzed the relation between using of metadiscourse in English commercial advertisement and the sales amount of products. At last, the writer also described the attentions should be paid to when cross-cultural companies advertise in foreign markets, including the Chinese enterprises advertise in western markets and western enterprises advertise in Chinese market, and the tips on metadiscourse for translators to concern about when they translate English advertisements into Chinese and vise versa.