A Study Of Dialogism In English Commercial Advertisements

Dialogism was proposed by Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975), a former SovietUnion philosopher, esthetician, literary critic and scholar who worked in literarytheory and the philosophy of language in the early20th century. It is also a keyconcept in linguistic theory and literary criticism of Bakhtin School’s theory ofutterance. Dialogism was not paid due attention by scholars until1960s. Previousresearch was only limited to literary area, however, in recent years, the focus has beenturned to non-literary areas, such as advertising discourse.According to Bakhtin, dialogism means that there are more than two interactingsounds in a dialogue or discourse; they formed the relationship of agreement anddisagreement, affirmation and supplement, questioning and answering (Xin Bin&Chen Tenglan,1999). Dialogism mainly emphasizes the communicative function oflanguage. Bakhtin considered that two or more reciprocal voices existed in dialogicdiscourse. Single sound can end or solve nothing, only two sounds are the minimumrequirements in life (Bakhtin,1996:262). So the essence of utterance is dialogism.With the analysis of the mini-corpus that is made up of30samples, the authorstudied dialogism in English commercial advertisements. The30samples are selectedfrom influential American magazines such as Readers’ Digest, Fortune, TheWashington Post, Elle, The New Yorker and Time.Based on Bakhtin’s dialogism and Halliday’s Systemic-Functional Grammar, theresearch intends to answer the following questions:(1) What are the characteristics ofdialogism?(2) How does the dialogism work in commercial advertisements?(3) Whatare the functions of dialogism in commercial advertisements? This thesis alsoprovides a general introduction to the definitions, classifications and functions ofdialogism and advertisements. Dialogism is employed in advertisements to drawconsumers’ attention, arouse their interests, create desires and take actions. In thisthesis, interpersonal meaning is mainly discussed. Interpersonal function can be realized by mood and modality system. By taking advertising discourses as examples,we can conclude that commercial advertisement is dialogic in nature.The purpose of advertisement is to propagate credibility of product or service inorder to persuade consumers to purchase product. It requires advertisers to adoptsome strategies to know more about consumers’ demanding and psychology that takebuying action. So a new perspective is put forward by dialogism and consumers areput in equal position with advertisers.This study has theoretical as well as practical significance. Theoretically, itmakes learners have a better understanding about dialogism in English commercialadvertisement; it also reinforces language learners’ comprehension about dialogism inadvertising discourses. Practically, it lays theoretical foundation for advertisers whowill design a persuasive advertisement and has enlightenments for consumers and forEnglish teaching as well. In English writing and translation, it has instructive functionand makes teachers emphasize on practical value as well as puts forward a higherrequirement for teachers. For consumers, this research let consumers purchase goodsin a rational way, stay clear-minded and avoid language trap and the influence oflanguage skills. So this study has important significance in theory and practice.