A Comparative Study Of Grammatical Cohesion In English And Chinese Advertising Texts

Taking Halliday and Hasan's cohesion theory as theoretical foundation, the present study examines and compares grammatical cohesion (GC) in English advertising texts (EATs) and Chinese advertising texts (CATs). This study reveals the similarities and differences in the use of grammatical cohesive devices (GCDs), explores the reasons, and probes into the underlying causes of the differences and its theoretical and practical implications.The results in this study reveal that EATs and CATs share many similarities for the common communicative purpose of advertising texts. Meanwhile, influenced by diverse thoughts and cultures, EATs and CATs in the two different language systems inevitably demonstrate some differences in the employment of GCDs. To drive the point home, a further attempt is made to probe into the underlying causes of the differences from the perspectives of language, thought and culture.The present study carries implications for cohesion study and for comparative study of English and Chinese theoretically and it sheds some light on advertising, translation and English language teaching practically.