A Comparative Study Of Chinese And American Real Estate Adyertisements In The Perspective Of CDA

Housing is one of necessities in people’s life. Consequently, real estate advertisements, as the main sources of houses, are very common in newspapers. This study conducts a comparative study of100Chinese real estate advertisements and100American real estate advertisements from a critical discourse analysis perspective. The advertisements are chosen from three mainstream newspapers in China and three mainstream newspapers in the USA, all published from January to December,2011. The present study aims to help people better understand real estate advertisements and get aware of people’s residential mentality in the two countries and improve people’s critical reading ability of real estate advertisements. This study aims to answer four questions:1) What are the different language features of Chinese and American real estate advertisements?2) How does discursive practice produce, distribute and consume the real estate advertisement text?3) What are the ideologies embedded in these real estate advertisements?4) What are the reasons for such different ideologies?Fairclough’s Three-dimensional Model is used as the analysis framework in the study. Chinese and American real estate advertisements are analyzed in description, interpretation and explanation dimensions. In description, transitivity and lexical classification is the analysis tool to describe the language features. In interpretation, the production process of real estate advertisement discourse is elaborated quantitatively and qualitatively according to Han Jinlong’s classification of intertextuality (specific, generic and cultural intertextuality). In explanation, the embedded ideologies are summarized and the reasons for them are clarified.The findings of the present study are as follows. In language features, both Chinese and American real estate advertisements prefer to adopt relational process to introduce the detailed information about real estate; while their differences are Chinese advertisements often use gorgeous words, but American ones use simple and direct expressions frequently. In the process of discourse production and ideology reflection, generic intertextuality and cultural intertextuality are frequently adopted and specific intertextuality is not universal in Chinese real estate advertisements. There are a number of American real estate advertisements using generic intertextuality and cultural intertextuality and there is no specific intertextuality. The main ideologies in Chinese real estate advertisements are as follows. They pursue high social status, emphasize education and lay attachment to family. The main ideology in American real estate advertisements is emphasis on privacy. The same ideology in both countries is pursuing of beautiful natural living environment. In general, the different cultures make great influence on their ideologies.