Appraisal Resources In English Commercial Advertising Discourse

The present thesis is motivated by the wide application of Appraisal Theory to discourse analysis and the prominent occurrence of commercial advertisements which are characterized by substantial use of Appraisal resources. It attempts to make a tentative study of English commercial advertising discourse within the framework of Appraisal Theory. Such a study can be of social significance due to its function as a medium for interaction and negotiation between advertisers and potential consumers.A corpus is established of 30 published commercial advertisements which are selected from the most influential magazines in America—Times, New Yorker and Business Weekly (issues of November and December in 2007). An Appraisal analysis of the 30 sample advertisements covering a variety of products and services are carried out through both qualitative and quantitative approaches.It has been found that Appraisal resources are realized lexically and grammatically in English commercial advertising discourse and that they perform two functions, namely, informative and persuasive. The frequencies of Appraisal resources are not well-proportioned and the functions of Appraisal resources do not gain the same weight in English commercial advertising discourse. That is to say, Attitude is overtly and substantially fore-grounded rather than Engagement and Graduation which are used mainly to bring the attitudinal manipulation.In Attitude System, Appreciation, which is prevalent, becomes the salient stylistic feature of English commercial advertisements. Advertisers endue the promoted products or services with high frequency of Appreciation so as to facilitate the motivation of potential customers to buy the products or services. In Engagement System, the preference is more obviously given to Heterogloss than to Monogloss. Heterogloss prevails, which indicates advertisers negotiate an interpersonal space for his or her own position within the discourse. In Graduation System, Force values obviously outweigh Focus values to a large extent. Advertisers always use some'raised'or'sharpening'words to highlight positive Attitude while using some'lowered'or'softening'words to blur negative Attitude.In brief, the present study reveals that English commercial advertisements contain a large amount of Appraisal resources, which are deployed by advertisers in attempt to persuade or otherwise entice potential consumers to purchase products or services.