Discourse Analysis Of Advertising Chinese

There have been many researches on advertising language; however, few of them are conducted hi the framework of discourse analysis and take insights from sociolinguistics. Furthermore, linguists put emphasis on analyzing the linguistic features of advertising language, especially advertising English. Though some scholars mention that advertising has three functions (namely, the informative function, the persuasive function and the reflective function), they only provide an analysis of the informative function and the persuasive function.On the basis of the previous research work, my research is conducted in the framework of discourse analysis, hi the meantime, insights are also taken from sociolinguistics. At first, I argue that as language can constitute social realities (Faircloughl985, 1989, 1992; Crystal 1987; Cook 1994; Gee 2000), advertising language have four functions, that is, the three functions mentioned by scholars as R. N. Smith, and the constitutive function. Then I hold and try to demonstrate that a complete discourse analysis of advertising language (in my study, advertising Chinese) should be composed of two ports: formal analysis and functional analysis. The part of formal analysis is contributed to analyze the linguistic features of advertising Chinese. Formal analysis hi my research is carried out on the analyses of lexical, grammatical, rhetorical and stylistic features. Then the purpose of the functional analysis is to analyze the aforementioned four functions of advertising language and to discover the relationship between advertising Chinese and society. As many researches have done on the informative function and the persuasive function, emphasis is laid on analyzing the reflective function and the constitutive function. Studies on social strata and gender are taken to demonstrate the reflective function and the constitutive function respectively.