| The development of economy speeds up the exchange of culture and the prosperity of oversea education, especially the business related programs. More people choose to study abroad. As the official language of the world, English taught programs are more popular than before. It is known that advertising booms economy and society. Therefore, English education advertisements spring up in the once non-advertising field, and come'to play an essential part in school promotions.Short and brief, the English education advertisements carry a great deal of information. It helps the readers/potential customers to get a better knowledge of the advertised school, and find their ideal one, and the advertised schools to promote their programs and attract new students. In a way, the English education advertisements bridge the readers/potential customers and the advertised schools.This study explores the interpersonal meaning of English education advertisements within the framework of the APPRAISAL theory. Advertisement plays an important role in our daily life. This thesis only focuses on one kind of the most common commercial advertisements—the English education advertisement. Since language is the core of it, pictures and audio materials in advertisements will not be discussed in this study.APPRAISAL theory was first proposed by linguist Martin in the early 1990s. It is a theoretical system used to describe and explain the usage of language. APPRAISAL theory is employed to analyze the interpersonal function of language at the discourse semantic level, which also concerns with negotiable attitudes in the discourse. That is to say, the theory explores the ways in which people use language to express affect, judgment and appreciation, and methods to realize empathy and finally achieve the persuasive purposes. It was put forward as a supplement to interpersonal meanings of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). It has been continuously modified and applied to analyze various kinds of genres, such as advertisements, journal language, speeches, etc, in order to discover more about how the text expresses the standpoints and attitudes of the speakers/writers.This thesis tries to do an APPRAISAL investigation of English education advertisements, aiming to discover the distribution of APPRAISAL resources (attitude, engagement, and graduation) in this type of genre and explore the ways in which the interpersonal meanings between the advertised schools and readers/potential customers are achieved. Moreover, on the practical level, the thorough analysis can help Chinese readers/potential customers to have a better understanding of these advertised schools. Finally, the Chinese institutes which run English taught programs would find some valuable reference for writing English education advertisements.As stated in the first chapter, this study aims to explore the interpersonal meanings of English education advertisements from the perspective of APPRAISAL theory. In the analysis, the involvement of interpersonal negotiation between advertisers and the readers are clear to find. Based on the data analysis, some conclusions are drawn, which will be discussed in the following part.APPRAISAL Theory is playing a very important role in discourse analysis. It has attracted lots of scholars or linguists to apply it in the analysis of various texts. Since there is rarely research conducted in English education advertisement, which is a vital kind of advertisements in the international education field, the author adopts this theory as the framework of this thesis. As discussed in Chapter Four, the author posed a lot of questions, and though this study, the author finds the answers to these questions.50 pieces of English education advertisements collected from the internet are thoroughly analyzed, and the distribution of each kind of APPRAISAL resources is figured out. The following parts will give a full explanation of these findings.Firstly, a wide variety of APPRAISAL resources are employed by the advertisers, in order to build a strong positive interpersonal relationship with the potential students, and eventually persuade them to attend the advertised schools. Furthermore, the study.also finds that the use of different APPRAISAL resources is not contradictory to, but compatible with, the objectivity of English education advertisements. The schools, by using these resources, show their great attractions to the potential students. They share the same purpose, that is, to get more students enrolled by their schools. To some extent, they work as the statesmen of their school.The three types of APPRAISAL resources, Attitude, Engagement and Graduation, are not evenly distributed. Attitude takes the largest percentage, Graduation and Engagement appear less. The distribution of each subsystem of Attitude, Engagement and Graduation also varies with each other.They employ different attitude resources to show the high teaching qualities, and all beneficial elements to students. Engagement resources are employed to hide themselves behind the conversation, in order to sound objective, and graduation resources to impress the readers with the charm of their schools.Secondly, abundant APPRAISAL resources are employed in these advertisements. As APPRAISAL system has three subsystems, the author will discuss the findings of related system respectively.The attitude resources used in Education advertisements are mainly positive, active and attractive expressions. As discussed in the Chapter Five, it could be found that Affect resources are not very rich, and most of them are used to describe the teachers or students; while appreciation resources are used to evaluate the every details of teaching; and judgment recourses mainly concern the capacity of teaching staff. Appreciation resources take up to 57.3% of all the APPRAISAL resources, which proves that appreciation is the most important resources used to convey the persuasive purpose. Teaching quality, atmosphere and locations of schools are the most important references when people compare one school with the other. Judgment resources account for 7.7% of the Attitude resources. It is mainly used to describe the teaching capacities of teachers. This goes with another of their concern when people choose ideal schools. Affect resources (2.6% of the total resources) are rarely used in these advertisements.Through the research on engagement values, the author finds that most of the advertisement content is monoglossic. And the subsystems of engagement resources distributes in a very unbalanced way. Monogloss takes 68.6% of the total Engagement resources, while Heterogloss takes 31.4%.As for the Graduation resources, there are plenty of force resources, but a few focus ones. The statistics shows that Force takes up to 83.5% of the total Graduation resources, while Focus takes only 16.5%. Graduation resources strengthen the advertising effect of English education advertisements.The present study also has some implications. It proves that the on-going APPRAISAL theory is an applicable and practical theory for the discourse analysis of English education advertisements. The present study broadens the scale of its application.Furthermore, this study explains how advertisers put forward an evaluative stance in English education advertisements. Though this study, the author gains a comprehensive understanding of how different APPRAISAL resources are employed to convey the various propositions and proposals, and to negotiate different voices, and ultimately achieve the goal of persuasion in a seemingly objective way. Finally, the study intends to gain more reference in the writing of English education advertisements for Chinese schools. This study helps teachers and students realize that they could realize their communicative purpose by adjusting the use of APPRAISAL resources.This thesis is divided into six chapters systematically.Chapter One is introduction. This part is an overview of the whole thesis, including the general background of the thesis, the rationales and the significance of the research, and the organization of the thesis.Chapter Two is literature review. This part presents a review of previous related literature. Firstly, main concepts in the study are given. Secondly, the previous researches at home and abroad on APPRAISAL Theory are introduced. Thirdly, the previous researches on advertisements are presented. Lastly, some related studies on English education advertisements will be reviewed briefly. These reviews clearly present the present research situation, which further proves the great meaning of this research.Chapter Three is about the theoretical framework of this study. Brief introduction of the conceptual framework-APPRAISAL theory is given at the beginning. Then, the subsystems of the theory are explained in detail respectively. And the relationship and interaction of the subsystems are presented. Thus, the theoretical framework used in this thesis is set up in the chapter. It is the basis of this study.Chapter Four is the methodology part, including research questions, data collection and data selection, research method. The author indicates that both qualitative and quantitative methods will be used to do the analysis. In the end, a sample text is presented and the analysis procedures are elaborated.Chapter Five is the critical part of this thesis. Analysis procedures elaborated in Chapter Four are applied to study each text respectively, under the framework of the APPRAISAL Theory, with the purpose to find out how the interpersonal meaning is achieved. This chapter is the core of the thesis, and it deserves wide attention.The last chapter shows the major findings and implications of this study, and states the limitations standing in the way of this study, and makes some suggestions for further researches on the same topic. |
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