An Analysis Of The Linguistic Features Of Chinese Real Estate Advertisements From The Perspective Of Foregrounding

Based on the foregrounding theory, this thesis analyzes the linguistic features of Chinese real advertisements from two aspects:qualitative foregrounding and quantitative foregrounding in order to prove that the theory of foregrounding can be used in practical writings like Chinese real advertising. Meanwhile, through this study the author proves there is a close relationship between foregrounded features and advertising effect.The term "foregrounding" originates from painting field, which means placing the stressed people or materials in the salient place of the painting. While the rest people or materials form the background. Later, this concept was introduced into linguistic field and developed by Russian formalists and Prague School structualists like Viktor Shklovsky and Jan Mukarovsky. And the theory of foregrounding now is finally developed and formed by Leech and Halliday's theory. Foregrounding can be categorized into qualitative foregrounding and quantitative foregrounding. In specific texts, the effect of foregrounding is determined by the combination of the author's idea on the foregrounded features, textual realization and the readers'interpretation.This thesis applies the foregrounding theory on Chinese real estate advertisements. The reason why the author chooses Chinese real estate advertisements as the research object is that foregrounding theory is a classical Western stylistic theory, and it is less frequently used in the study of practical writings like Chinese adverting. The thesis intends to explore the applicability of the foregrounding theory to Chinese real estate advertising and broaden the application area of this theory; meanwhile the thesis does an interpretation of the foregrounded features in Chinese real estate advertisements and proves that there is a close relationship between the foregrounded features and the effect of advertising. The study shows:the linguistic features of Chinese real estate advertisements are mainly reflected in qualitative foregrounding, that is deliberate deviance of linguistic norms, which includes lexical deviation, grammatical deviation, semantic deviation and the deviation of register. By using these deviations, advertising composers break the readers'normal expectancy toward real estate advertising in order to attract their attention and prompt them to make purchases. Some real estate advertisers may reach the effect of quantitative foregrounding by repeating one or one kind of morpheme, lexicon, phrase or sentence in order to impress the readers. Through this research, the thesis proves that foregrounding theory is a useful tool in studying the Chinese real estate advertising and it can be used in guiding the composition of real estate advertisements. However, this thesis has some shortcomings as well, which is basically due to the difference between English and Chinese. As a Western stylistic theory, the foregrounding theory has to break down many barriers in its application to Chinese advertising. And the further research can be conducted through combining the foregrounding theory with Chinese linguistic rules so as to produce a more fruitful result applied to all Chinese texts.