Patterns Of Text Organization Realized In English Print Advertisements

Advertising can be considered as one of the key signatures of modernity. As such it has attracted a great deal of attention from writers and researchers attempting to understand and explain some of the workings and experiences of modern living. A general fascination with the significance and the impact of advertising has been given intellectual expression as academics and other writers have conducted studies or made pronouncements on advertising. The study of advertising has always been intermeshed with larger questions about culture and value, language and signification, technology and humanity, motivation and morality, identity, economy, politics and social organization.Advertising has a crucial influence on society, so it is in close relation to human language. To put it simply, language is an important aspect of advertising study. However, few studies have been undertaken in linguistics. During the past few years, most of the researchers interested in advertising language in our country have rigidly adhered to the traditional linguistic points of view. They have mainly focused on the features and rhetorical devices on sentence level of advertisements while studies on the macro-structure such as discourse and text have not been sufficient.This paper is within the domain of the academic discipline and mainly focuses on the macro-structure, that is, the patterns of text organization of English advertisements. It aims to explore the applicability of Michael Hoey's view on textual patterns (the Problem-Solution pattern, the Goal-Achievement pattern, the Opportunity-Taking pattern, and the Desire Arousal-Fulfillment pattern) through analyzing some written advertisements in English. In the meanwhile, several other patterns (the Question-Answer pattern, the Experience-Call to Action pattern, the Experience-Evaluation pattern, the Announcement-Statement pattern, the Simulated Dialogue pattern, and Straight-Line Copy List) are also contributed through the author's further observation. The paper offers a more detailed analysis of the characteristics on different levels of advertising language. Some pragmatic features are also explored such as implication, the use of pun and grammatical metaphor. Toward the end of this paper, the underlying reasons for the existence of different patterns have been explored by adopting Leech's rhetorical approach to pragmatics and his view on pragmatics as problem-solving.This thesis adopts a qualitative and interpretative approach which uses existing examples of advertising as a source of data to support the author's idea. It consists of five parts. Chapter I gives a clear view of the researches on discourse analysis and advertising language. In the meantime, the general purpose and methodology of this study as well as data collection are stated. Chapter II mainly adopts Michael Hoey's view on pragmatic patterns of text organization in analyzing English print advertisements. It shows clearly how different patterns may work in the interpretation of advertising text. In this, it deals with four patterns, i.e. the Problem-Solution pattern, the Goal-Achievement pattern, the Opportunity-Taking pattern and the Desire Arousal-Fulfillment pattern, and discusses how these patterns are signaled. Chapter III presents through further observation several other textual patterns which function in advertisements, i.e. the Question-Answer pattern, the Experience-Call to Action pattern, the Experience-Evaluation pattern, the Announcement-Statement pattern, the Simulated Dialogue pattern and Straight-Line Copy List. Chapter IV, as an important one, explains the deep reasons behind different patterns by adopting Leech's view on pragmatics as problem-solving and his rhetorical approach to pragmatics. The last chapter is the conclusion in which it is pointed out that among the patterns which may occur in advertisements, some will be very rare while others will recur frequently. The dividing linemay not be absolutely clear. Therefore, different types of patterns will be determined by utility...