A Contrastive Discourse Analysis Of Interpersonal Function In Chinese And English Cosmetic Expositions

More than five decades has past ever since the term "discourse analysis" first appeared in the article Discourse Analysis in1952. From then on, it has stimulated great interests and great efforts have been put into this field. It has grown into a highly interdisciplinary field of study which is connected with linguistics, psychology, and sociology. It is the analysis of language in use. On the one hand, a large number of scholars of diverse fields have given different definitions to this subject and studied discourse analysis from different aspects. On the other hand, there are also those scholars who have done a lot of effective work on numerous discourses such as advertisements, abstracts, traveling texts, etc. However, through a general survey of the existing literature, our research reveals that few scholars put their focus on cosmetic expositions and most of them are studied from the standpoint of strict translation. In addition, the contrast of English and Chinese cosmetic expositions is rare and there is a long way to go in this field. With China's entry of the WTO, the competition between the foreign and domestic cosmetic market is becoming increasingly severe. As an information carrier, cosmetic exposition plays a much more crucial role. Thus in-depth and systematic studies of cosmetic expositions are demanded. Thus, this paper is designed as a first attempt.In present studies, cosmetic expositions mainly refer to the texts supplying basic and sufficient information on cosmetic destinations with an aim of publicizing and promoting the cosmetic products. Generally speaking, cosmetic expositions include the introduction of main ingredients, effect, brand name, use directions, warning, manufacture date, expiration date, net weight, manufacturer, address, etc. and they may appear in various forms including brochures, pamphlets, guidebooks, etc. Brands include OLAY, POND'S, MAYBELLINE, CLINIQUE, etc. In this thesis these samples concern more about effect and the introduction of main ingredients as they are the most typical texts that interpersonal function exits in, including 30 Chinese samples and 30 English samples respectively, which come from the author's word-by-word copies of cosmetic expositions found on the outside surfaces of containers or in the inside booklets of cosmetic products and to show the credibility these samples choose the brands which are famous in the target language or in both languagesHowever, as a newly developed and interdisciplinary field of study, there is still no theory or approach which has ever been universally accepted so far. In the book An introduction to Functional Grammar, Halliday clearly points out that the aim of Functional Grammar is "to construct a grammar for the purposes of text analysis" (Halliday, 2000: F41). Therefore, functional grammar is applicable to discourse analysis. Halliday's functional grammar is composed of three metafunctions: the ideational function, the textual function and the interpersonal function. The interpersonal function refers to how we use language to interact with other people, to establish and maintain relations with them, to influence their behavior, to express our own viewpoints on things in the world and to elicit or change other's opinions i.e. persuasive language. On the basis of interpersonal function theories including the work of Halliday, Martin and Li Zhanzi, this thesis aims to make a contrast between Chinese and English cosmetic expositions through mood, modality and other ways to realize interpersonal function. To ensure the reliability and validity of the study, both quantitative and qualitative analysis are employed so as to examine whether functional grammar is applicable to the contrast of discourse analysis and how and to what extent Chinese and English cosmetic expositions are represented from the perspective of interpersonal function.The contrastive analysis and discussion of the interpersonal function of both two versions lead to the conclusions, which can be summarized as following: Firstly, functional grammar is applicable, not only in the contrastive analysis of abstracts, advertisement and tourist materials, but also in the contrastive analysis of cosmetic expositions. Secondly, there are similarities as well as disparities between English and Chinese expositions. (1) To convey information, the majority of the sentences in the two versions are written in declarative mood; the use of exclamative mood is to show strong response to something; the use of imperative mood is to express request; Compared with the Chinese version the English employs various moods to give the language variety and make it friendly to achieve the aim of persuasion. (2) In terms of person system, the frequency of person pronouns in English versions is much higher than that in Chinese ones. In both the two versions the second pronoun are predominant while the Chinese version uses 'you' in the honorable form (您) to express the producer's respect, which enlarge the psychological gap between the producer and the consumers.(3) In terms of modal adjuncts, both the two version tends to use those of low and medium value. (4) To tend to be objective, simple present tense is popular in both two versions. (5) In the appraisal system, both two versions employ a variety of adjective, adverbs, nouns and verbs. English cosmetic expositions emphasize subjective effect and judgment, while the Chinese ones pay attention to objective appreciation, which reflects a different cultural tendency between the two languages.As such, a contrast becomes apparent between Chinese and English cosmetic expositions, which provide a brand-new perspective for both the study of cosmetic expositions and the research concerning functional grammar. It is hoped that the findings in this study can be contributive to cosmetic discourse analysis. It is also hoped that this work can attract a great pool of experts and scholars to make further research in this area.