| Advertising has been so prevalent in this age of information that we can not ignore its existence. As the two branches of advertising, public service advertising (PSA) and commercial advertising (CA) enrich and influence people's life from different perspectives.Based on J. R. Martin's Appraisal Theory (AT), the research has made a contrastive analysis of English public service advertising and commercial advertising by combining quantitative and qualitative approaches. The researcher has collected 40 public service advertising texts (PSAs) randomly, most of which are from famous English websites, to be specific, the websites of American Ad Council, the World Wild Fund and National Geographic and so on. At the same time, the researcher has collected 40 commercial advertising texts (CAs) from renowned English magazines such as Time, Fortune, Newsweek, National Geographic, and Reader's Digest and so on. Then, the researcher identified and annotated the appraisal resources in these 80 ads within the framework of AT. With the help of WordSmith 4.0, a careful contrastive analysis has been carried out in terms of the three subsystems of AT (attitude, engagement and graduation).It is found that appraisal resources abound in both PSAs and CAs. There are 306 appraisal resources in PSAs and 457 in CAs, to be specific, in the PSAs, there are 166 attitudinal values,54 values of engagement (heterogloss) and 86 values of graduation; in the CAs, there are 281 attitudinal resources,36 values of engagement (heterogloss) and 140 values of graduation. By a contrastive analysis, we find that in both PSAs and CAs, the distribution of appraisal resources is not in proportion and attitudinal resources are predominantly fore-grounded than those of engagement and graduation. In the system of attitude, there is a combination of positive and negative values of affect in the PSAs while all of the affective values are positive in the CAs. This is because the description of negative values is an effective way for PSAs to strengthen the expression of hopes and desires. But the CAs tend to get aligned with consumers by adopting positive values of affect which are associated with the feeling of success and desire. The PSAs stress people's ability to take positive actions and pay much attention to the propriety. But the CAs foreground individual ability and successfulness. They do not tackle propriety. Both PSAs and CAs have no negative values of tenacity and veracity. The PSAs emphasize valuation or social worth, trying to advocate social responsibilities and establish healthy social vogue. But the CAs stress reaction by describing clearly and exactly what the product or service is. In terms of engagement (heterogloss), PSAs adopt more values of dialogic expansion while the CAs use more values of dialogic contraction. This is purpose-oriented because PSAs try to construe a more open and equal relationship with the public while CAs try to achieve solidarity with consumers by contracting the dialogic space of its language. In terms of graduation, both PSAs and CAs adopt much more values of force than focus and much more force-raise than force-lower, for both of them try to impress the readers deeply with the only help of written language. After the analysis of the similaritites and differences, an explanation of the possible reasons has been given.This thesis proves that AT is effective in analyzing the genre of advertising. The comparative analysis of appraisal resources in English PSAs and CAs can be complementary to the previous studies of advertising. Practically, the present research may benefit the copywriters of both ads. The findings can be helpful for the creation of better PSAs and CAs. At the same time, it is helpful for readers, especially consumers to have a better understanding of commercial advertising language. In addition, this research may shed light on the teaching of English advertising discourse and its implications in aesthetic appreciation.
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