A Comparative Study Of The Interpersonal Function Of Chinese And English Cosmetic Advertisements

Interpersonal function is one of the important functions of language. People interact with each other, establishing and maintaining relationships with each other through language. Interpersonal function means that language is used to express the speaker’s identity, status, attitude and motivation, etc.The thesis makes a comparative study of the interpersonal meaning of Chinese and English cosmetic advertising texts in mood, modality and evaluation respectively, and discovers how the advertisement attracts the consumers to buy cosmetic from the approach of the Systemic-Functional Grammar(SFG). It also tries to prove that the SFG put forward by Halliday is an effective methodology for conducting discourse analysis, which may broaden the relevant theoretic studies. The author tries to find out the characteristics of language and the principle of using language, which provides the effective ways for writing cosmetic advertising texts. Besides, the author hopes that through the present research people can widely identify the truthfulness of the cosmetic advertising texts.The research is conducted on50pieces of Chinese and English cosmetic advertising texts respectively that have been collected through different sources, such as many departments in Nanjing, beauty magazines and the beauty websites mainly in2008and2009. In this thesis the discourse discussed are cosmetic advertising texts, not including headings, slogans and other items.The present thesis discusses seven aspects of discourse patterns, the realization of the speech role of information-giving and action-demanding, the realization of modalization, modulation, and evaluation, and the promoting approaches. Besides, it finds out three aspects of differences, including the aspect of discourse patterns, the realization of modulation and the realization of modulation. The thesis also gives some explanations on the similarities and differences.Based on the above elaboration and analysis, the thesis can prove the usefulness of functional grammar in discourse analysis. The thesis attempts to prove that interpersonal meaning in cosmetic advertising texts can be complementary to the previous research on advertising. The comparative study of interpersonal meaning in cosmetic advertising texts between Chinese and English is likely to achieve a kind of domain extension from the previous research both on advertising texts and on interpersonal meaning, and has much intercultural significance.