A Contrastive Analysis Of Chinese And English Public Service Advertising Text From The Perspective Of Interpersonal Meaning

Public Service Advertising(PSA for short)is a special type of advertisement,which is usually published for a non-profitable purpose.PSA aims to arouse people’s awareness for certain social phenomenon,influence the public’s thoughts and standardize their behaviors.At present,most scholars at home and abroad focus on the research of commercial advertisements,and little attention has been paid to the study of PSA.Moreover,most of the PSA analyses are related to rhetoric,aesthetics and stylistics,and the studies from the perspective of interpersonal meaning are insufficient.As one of Halliday’s three metafunctions,interpersonal meaning,realized by the interpersonal function can not only decode the speaker’s identity,status,and motivation,but also can conduct reasoning,Judging and evaluating to things.To make a further research into PSA,the thesis tries to make a contrastive analysis of Chinese and English PSA texts from the perspective of interpersonal meaning.The thesis adopts both quantitative and qualitative analytical method.First,50 Chinese and English PSA texts are selected respectively.Next,taking systemic functional grammar as the main theoretical basis,a contrastive analysis about the realization of interpersonal meaning in Chinese and English PSA texts is conducted.Since interpersonal meaning is realized in three ways—mood,modality and person system.The analysis is carried out from the three aspects to explore the similarities and differences between Chinese and English PSA texts in terms of interpersonal meaning,in which the emphasis is put on the differences.The following research results are obtained through the contrastive analysis.Firstly,in mood analysis,Chinese PSA texts prefer declaratives,while English ones prefer imperatives.Secondly,in modality analysis,Chinese PSA texts use more low modal operators,while English ones employ more medium and high modal operators.Thirdly,in person analysis,Chinese PSA texts use more first person pronouns,whereas English ones use more second person pronouns.In this thesis,it’s necessary to seek the cultural factors contributing to the differences between Chinese and English PSA texts in terms of interpersonal meaning,that is the difference between high context culture and low context culture,the difference between collectivism and individualism and different thinking patterns.The contrastive analysis between Chinese and English PSA texts from the perspective of interpersonal meaning can help both sides to learn from each other,enhance strong points,and avoid shortcomings.Besides,difference between Chinese and English PSA texts is also a part of cultural difference,thus the study of which can facilitate people to have a better understanding about cultural differences between Chinese and western countries.The study is also conductive for public service advertisers to take interpersonal meaning into consideration when creating PSAs.Last but not the least,this study can broaden the research field,and shed light on the impact of linguistic theories on the understanding of PSAs.