A Study On The Appraisal Resources In English Public Service Advertisements

Advertisements are very widespread nowadays and they play an increasingly important role in our daily life. Ever since advertisements appeared, they have attracted attention of many scholars. Advertisements are broadly grouped into commercial advertisements and non-commercial advertisements. While commercial advertisements have long been studied from various linguistic perspectives, few studies have been carried out on public service advertisements—one important sub-type of non-commercial advertisements, there are even less within the framework of Appraisal Theory, thus this thesis intends to explore English public service advertisements guided by Appraisal Theory. 20 pieces of English Public Service are selected mainly from website www.millerngo.com/ads:html and partly from the well-known American magazines: Fortune, Newsweek and The Times. The three sub-systems of Appraisal Theory (Attitude, Engagement and Graduation) are adopted respectively to analyze in detail the sample EPSA discourses, using quantitative analytical methodology, to figure out the following research questions:(1) What are the frequencies of the three Attitude sub-systems in the sample English Public Service advertisements? Which kind of Attitude resources is preferred?What functions do they perform respectively?(2) What are the frequencies of the two Engagement subsystems? Which kind is outnumbered, dialogical expansive or dialogical contractive and why? What functions do they perform respectively?(3) Which kind of Graduation resources do the advertisers prefer, Force or Focus? What functions do they perform?It is found that in Attitude System, Appreciation accounts for about 45.5% out of all the Attitude resources, Judgement accounts for 33.6% and Affect accounts for 20.9%. Appreciation expressions far outweigh the other two. Moreover, within the category of Appreciation, Valuation is used more frequently than Reaction and Composition, which can act to raise the readers'awareness of the social significance of the entities or phenomena concerned in advertisements and to manipulate their view. Within the category of Judgement, positive capacity is used most frequently to affirm people's capability, thus winning their trust and impelling them to take positive action immediately.In Engagement System, the frequency of dialogic expansive resources (which takes up 52.1%) in the sample English PSAs is a little higher than that of the dialogic contractive resources (which takes up 47.9%), which can show respect to the readers and persuade them more. Under Expansion, Entertain resources are used most frequently to align those who hold different value positions. Under Contraction, Disclaim resources are deployed more frequently to exclude alternative voices, which is powerful in strengthening the advertising force and appeal.Within Graduation system, only Force resources are observed. Of which, Raise resources (which accounts for 84.7%) are employed much more frequently than that of lower (which accounts for 15.3%), such linguistic devices can show the advertiser's assertiveness of his attitudinal evaluation, thus aligning the readers into that viewpoints.It is expected that this study may enrich previous studies of advertisements and be beneficial to Chinese advertisers in creating more effective public service advertisements.