A Contrastive Study Of Interpersonal Meaning In Chinese And English Commercial Advertising Texts

Interpersonal meaning or interpersonal function means that people use language to interact with others so as to establish and maintain relations with them, to influence others' attitude or behavior, and to express their own viewpoints on things in the world. In recent years, the studies of interpersonal meaning of different discourses have gained popularity. However, most of these studies are based on English discourses while researches on Chinese discourses are comparatively rare. Since the realization of interpersonal meaning may vary across different cultural and social contexts, this thesis intends to explore the similarities and differences in the realization of interpersonal meaning between Chinese and English discourses.This thesis chooses a very typical functional type of discourse - commercial advertising texts - as the research material. The research is based on a corpus of 30 Chinese commercial advertising texts (Chinese ads) and 30 English commercial advertising texts (English ads) randomly selected from famous Chinese or English magazines. Based on the analytical framework integrating Halliday's systemic functional grammar with Martin's appraisal theory, a contrastive analysis of interpersonal meaning in Chinese ads and English ads is carried out at the micro-social level as well as at the macro-social level. At the micro-social level, such aspects as mood, modality, and person system are examined; at the macro-social level, an investigation is made in terms of attitude, graduation and engagement.Through the multi-level analysis, it is found that the writers of Chinese ads and English ads skillfully deploy various linguistic resources to realize the interpersonal meaning of the commercial advertising texts. In terms of the realization of interpersonal meaning, Chinese ads and English ads share many similarities, and yet a huge difference does exist between them. The main similarities lie in: 1) preference to declarative mood; 2) rare use of high value modal operators; 3) highest frequency of second person pronouns; 4) large amount of positive appreciation; 5) wide use of force-raise.The major differences are listed as follows: 1) More interrogatives and imperatives are used in English ads while more exclamatives are employed in Chinese ads; 2) Low value modal operators are preferred by Chinese ads while both low and median value modal operators are commonly used in English ads; 3) English ads use far more personal pronouns than Chinese ads; 4) English ads are inclined to appreciate products or services via reaction while Chinese ads prefer to use valuation; 5) English ads tend to be more dialogically expansive than Chinese ads; 6) In the means of realizing force-raise, more maximization and repetition are used in Chinese ads, whereas comparatives and superlatives and lexicalization are more frequently employed in English ads. After the comparison, the thesis further explores the reasons behind these differences and gives some suggestions for Chinese-English or English-Chinese commercial advertisement translation and copywriting.