A Study On The Persuasive Function Of Public Service Advertising Language

Advertisements can be divided into commercial advertisements and non-commercial advertisements. Public service advertisements, as one kind of non-commercial advertisements, are usually released by the government and nonprofit social organizations. Public service advertising has been paid more and more attention to because it is non-profit. Both commercial advertisements and public service advertisements are persuasive in nature. The former appeals to tangible material products. It boasts consumption value which requires that the public should be willing and be able to pay, while the latter is usually issued by the governments or non-profit social organizations. And the persuadees are usually the public. It usually appeals to certain spiritual values. It boasts social values. The public may have to change their habits or get rid of the bad deeds. So metaphorical persuasion often makes the public realize certain ethics by spiritual communication. There exist big pragmatic differences between commercial advertisements and public service advertisements. This essay first analyzes the pragmatic differences between commercial advertisements and public service advertisements as well as the reasons for their differences. And then it goes on to analyze the realization process of the persuasive function of public service advertisements as far as their linguistic features and expressive ways are concerned.As far as their linguistic features and expressive ways are concerned, we start from the persuasive strategies adopted by public service advertisements. The persuasive strategies of public service advertisements can be divided into rational persuasive strategies and emotional persuasive strategies. This essay aims to analyze the realization of the persuasive function of public service advertising language as far as its linguistic features are concerned. We also aim to conduct a contrastive study of the linguistic features between rational persuasion and emotional persuasion. Halliday (2000) proposes that language boasts three meta-functions including ideational meta-function, interpersonal meta-function and textual meta-function. The realization of the persuasive function of public service advertisements is largely determined by the interpersonal meta-function of language. The persuaders mainly intend to persuade the persuadees to do more good deeds and get rid of the bad deeds through various modes, such as audio, pictorial, etc. The persuadees are the public with their own minds. So the persuaders must follow the Polite Principle in communication. All these factors play an important role in the language use of public service advertisements. The corpora of this essay are mainly from well-known media, such as CCTV, the Internet, etc. The realization process of public service advertisements will be analyzed from several aspects including sentence type, modality, personal pronoun and rhetoric device. Metaphorical thinking is one of the most important thinking ways of language. Metaphor is widely used in public service advertising language. And the use of metaphor can greatly increase the persuasive effect of public service advertising language. The public service advertising language studied here isn't limited to literal language alone, it also includes the pictorial language which is in pace with the development of the media technology and TV advertising. This essay also studies literal metaphor and pictorial metaphor as well as the relationship between them. It is found out that literal metaphor usually anchors pictorial metaphor. This essay holds the view that the use of pictorial metaphor in combination with literal metaphor is more persuasive than the use of mere literal metaphor. The use of pictorial metaphor can arouse human beings'visual memory, and people are born with visual function. However, literal language is acquired later. So visual metaphor plays a crucial role in the realization of the persuasive function of public service advertising language while literal language only adds the finishing touch. By studying the relationship between metaphor and similarity, it is found out that metaphor depends on human beings'cognition. There is a dialectical relationship between metaphor and similarity. And the dialectical relationship between metaphor and similarity gives a good explanation to the realization of the persuasive function of public service advertisements because persuasion can't do without the public's cognition either.According to Zhang Mingxin (2004), public service advertisements can be divided into five categories. So this essay conducted several case studies of these categories of public service advertisements and found that: the pragmatic differences between public service advertisements and commercial advertisements lie in their nature. Commercial advertisements emphasize on pursuing commercial profits and their persuasion is usually indirect. However, public service advertisements usually persuade based on public morality and public sense. Metaphorical persuasion is its main function. Public service advertisements are usually based on the contextual resources between the public and the advertisements, namely the audience's value, ethics, and world outlook. However, commercial advertisements are more likely to rely on content resources, such as the products'outlook, function and quality, etc. When it comes to their linguistic features and expressive methods: 1) as far as sentence type is concerned, the adoption of sentence type in rational persuasion is relatively monotonous, and declaratives are mostly used in rational persuasion, but there are various sentence types used in emotional persuasion, interrogatives and exclamatives are often adopted in emotional persuasion. 2) In terms of the frequency of high, median and low modality words, there are relatively few modality words used in rational persuasion while modality words, especially high and median modality words can often be seen in emotional persuasion. 3) When it comes to personal pronouns, there are relatively few personal pronouns in rational persuasion while in emotional persuasion, personal pronouns can often be seen, especially the second personal pronoun,"you". 4) As far as rhetoric device is concerned, rhetoric devices are not often used in rational persuasion. However, they are widely used in emotional persuasion, for example, metaphor, personification, etc. Metaphor is one of the most widely used rhetoric devices in emotional persuasion. The obvious linguistic differences between rational persuasion and emotional persuasion are due to the features of these two persuasive strategies themselves. Rational persuasion mainly achieves its persuasive effect by referring to reasons and arousing the public's reasonable thinking, and emotional persuasion tends to achieve its persuasive effect by stirring up the public's emotional feelings. The most striking difference between rational persuasion and emotional persuasion lies in the use of metaphor. Metaphorical persuasion is an effective way to realize the persuasive function of public service advertisements, and the adoption of metaphor is an important mark to differentiate emotional persuasion from rational persuasion. In most public service advertisements, literal metaphor anchors pictorial metaphor. In terms of the working mechanism of metaphorical persuasion, there exists a dialectical relationship between metaphor and similarity based on human beings'cognition. According to Fauconnier's (2002) study of the working mechanism of metaphor, we find that the working mechanism of metaphorical persuasion depends on similarity-motivation as well as human beings'cognition, especially the function of analogy, reflection and imagination boasted by human brains. Similarity can be divided into physical similarity, functional similarity, feeling similarity and homophonic similarity. And we get the conclusion that metaphorical persuasion can also be divided into physical similarity motivated metaphorical persuasion, functional similarity motivated metaphorical persuasion, feeling similarity motivated metaphorical persuasion and homophonic similarity motivated metaphorical persuasion. It is also found that the most striking feature that differentiates metaphorical persuasion from other kinds of persuasion is the use of metaphor. The proper adoption of metaphor, especially the proper use of pictorial metaphor, can effectively strengthen the persuasive effect of public service advertising language. Metaphorical persuasion functions through the combination of literal metaphor with pictorial metaphor based on similarity motivation as well as human beings'cognition.