An Interpersonal Analysis Of Advertising Discourse

Early work on interpersonal meaning beyond the level of grammar, that is in the discourse semantics of texts, focused initially on exchanged structure (Berry 1981, Ventola 1987, Martin 1992b). However, as Martin (2000:144) suggests, these approaches to interpersonal meaning within Systemic Functional Linguistics have tended to omit a detailed focus on"the semantics of evaluation– how the interlocutors are feeling, the judgements they make, and the value they place in the various phenomena of their experience".Appraisal theory (Martin 1997, 2000) is a model of interpersonal meaning at the level of discourse semantics within Systemic-Functional Linguistics (SFL). The theory enables different aspects of evaluation, including expressions of attitude, the identification of the source of the attitude, and the writer's positioning of those other sources, to be integrated in one model.This thesis draws on Appraisal model of interpersonal meaning to provide an important alternative to interpretations of evaluative stance from the writers and other voices introduced by the writers in advertising discourse. The data are about seven pieces of printed advertisement, collected from Business Week.This dissertation identifies certain preferences in the encoding of Attitude that enable the writer to make the texts be both persuasive and objective. A preference for encoding explicit Attitude as Appreciation, rather than as Affect or Judgement is found in the advertising texts, that is, Appreciation is the dominant kind of Attitude expressed. This contributes an impersonal orientation to expressions of explicit Attitude.Another finding resulting from the dissertation has to do with modeling the ways in which the writers of the advertisement texts, as the promoters of their goods, manage the voices and values from other sources that are introduced into the texts. This is achieved through a reworking of the system of Engagement within Appraisal theory. The writers choose options to align or dis-align readers with the values represented in the texts. By this way, the modelling of evaluative stance, ultimately as a network of Alignment, is based on an integrated analysis of Attitude, Graduation, and Engagement.This thesis is just an attempt to analyze advertising discourse within the SFL-informed theory of Appraisal system. Only print advertisement is explored in the dissertation. Therefore more comprehensive research in these areas (e.g. TV advertisements including moving images and musical sounds) needs to be done in the future.