The Interpersonal Meanings Of Advertising English

With the fast development of the world economy, whether people like it or not, and no matter whether they accept it or not, advertisements have filled our lives. Because of its concentrated language and commercialization, advertisement has attached lots of attention. Advertising is a kind of persuasive genre. It aims to promote sales by the strategic use of appealing and persuasive language. Thus, when advertising language is studied, it reveals how consumers are attracted to a commodity, how their interest and desire are aroused and how they are finally persuaded to take action by the advertisement.Metafunction is one of the key terms in Halliday's Functional Grammar, which he divides into three types, namely the ideational function, the textual function and the interpersonal function. The interpersonal function is concerned with the strand of meaning produced when people use language to interact with others, to establish and maintain relations with them, to influence their behavior, to express their own viewpoints, and to elicit or change their ideas.This thesis mainly focuses on the realization of the interpersonal meaning by modality in advertisements. Modality can be divided into modalization and modulation, which is often done through the use of modal operators, mood adjuncts and interpersonal metaphors to show the speakers'probability, usuality, inclination and obligation. By employing those linguistic devices, the advertisers are always trying to beautify their products or service, to inspire people's imagination, to stimulate their emotion, or to persuade customers to purchase certain commodities or services. Besides, the proper use of the notional words, such as personal pronouns or possessives, adjectives and adverbs can also be the effective means to create different interpersonal meanings. In order to establish a desirable relationship with the consumers, the advertisers often try to lure potential consumers by employing these devices, equating advertisements with informal conversation, and exhibiting pervasive trends. Through this study, this thesis has finally proved the applicability of functional stylistics. The ultimate aim of the paper is to give some theoretical and practical suggestions and directions on how the systemic functional stylistics can be employed in various sorts of practical writings.