A Tentative Study Of The Attractive Function Of The English Advertisement Headlines

With the rapid booming of advertising industry, we find ourselves exposed to various advertisements that nearly blanket everywhere. In a sense, advertisement has become an indispensable part of our everyday life and it provides a means by which we learn about new products and, in the process, shapes mass behavior and desires.Though many scholars have discussed the stylistic features and the skills of writing advertisement, they mainly focus on the general advertising language, and their analysis is inadequate of a theoretical foundation. To make a comprehensive analysis of ads headlines, in which various linguistic means employed, the thesis applies the foregrounding theory as a theoretical foundation, attempting to analyze the stylistic features of English advertisement headlines systematically and comprehensively.Halliday, an authority on linguistics, develops the Foregrounding Theory and regards it as"motivated prominence"from the angle of function. It implies that only when the deviant features as well as those which are not deviant, but nevertheless striking features, functioning in the context could they be taken as"foregrounding". That is to say, foregrounding is style. Functionists believe that language function and its context determine the stylistic features. In any practical variety, only when language features are performing their various functions in the situational context,,they characterized, activated and foregrounded, and become the stylistic features of the article. The key functions of advertisements are to attract consumers attention, arouse their interests, and finally persuade them to take purchase action. Thus the attractive function is of the primary to make other functions proceeding possible.A headline of an advertisement can be compared as the title of a book, aiming to guide the readers in their pursuing for the information. An advertisement headline can be the theme of an advertisement. In the paper, the theory of themarization has been employed to analyze the relationship between advertisements and the advertisements headline. The attractive function that ads are expected to pursue heavily depends on ads headlines since they are usually the first thing run into the reader's eyes. As a result, this thesis focuses mainly on the ads headlines, which undertake the fulfillment of attractive function of the advertisement.Foregrounding Theory is usually applied in analyzing the artistically motivated prominence in poems and literary works; however, in order to attract readers'attention, the advertisement copywriters have manipulated every linguistic means to its utmost. By deviation and overregularrity (the two realization devices of the foregrounding), the copywriters successfully foreground the ads headlines, making them prominent and thus...