A Contrastive Study On The Thematic Progression Patterns In English Public Service Advertisements And Commercial Advertisements

Public service advertisement, as it is called, aims to publicize the morality andpromote social justice, instead of making profit, further helping the public to form acorrect outlook and values. On the contrary, commercials aim to increase the profit ofthe enterprises. Its sole purpose is to persuade potential customers who have shown nointerest, no demand for goods to purchase the goods or service.The thematic progression pattern is closely related to the coherence of a text. Thusthematic progression pattern provides an important means to discourse analysis. Therelevant concepts of Theme, Rheme and Thematic Progression Patterns are introducedin this thesis. Further analysis of application of the Theme-Rheme theory and thematicprogression patterns in public service advertisements and commercial advertisements iscarried out.The thematic progression patterns may contribute to the coherence of advertisingtexts and thus attract the audience’s attention. According to the contractive analysis ofthe selected materials, we can find out that there are both similarities and differencesbetween the two types of advertisements. The author makes an attempt to find out thepossible factors that cause the different use of thematic progression patterns.