A Systemic Functional Study Of Grammatical Metaphor In English Commercial Advertisements

Advertisement can be regarded as a special type of communication. As a matter of fact, advertisements exist in every corner of the world and play a significant role in our daily life. Advertisements have been studied in a variety of angles, ranging from semiotic approach, pragmatic approach, stylistic approach, discourse analysis approach to functional approach. What is new, few research has been conducted from Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). Therefore, the thesis has been done on grammatical metaphor (hereafter GM) in English commercial advertisements from the perspective of Systemic Functional Grammar. The thesis aims at answering the following questions:(1) How grammatical metaphor is used in English commercial advertisement?(2) What kind of grammatical metaphor is used in English commercial advertisement?(3)What are grammatical metaphors’functions in English commercial advertisement?The grammatical metaphor, which is on the basis of Systemic Functional Linguistics, provides a solid framework for the analysis of the English commercial advertisements. The thesis has taken English commercial advertisements as the target to analyze grammatical metaphor from qualitative approach. The data adopted in the present thesis are chosen from the three influential books about the translation of English advertisements, which are English Advertising (1993) by Cui, Englsih Advertisements (1992) by Zhao and Advertisement and English in Advertising by Qi (2003).Based on the analysis procedure, some findings are gotten. The grammatical metaphor can be divided into three types; they are ideational GM, interpersonal GM and textual GM. The employment of ideational metaphor aims at realizing the persuasion purpose, increasing the credibility of commercial advertising, and arousing consumers’interest to accomplish the action of buying products. The interrogative and imperative sentences used in English commercial advertisements can contribute to the realization of interpersonal metaphor. Interrogative sentence can stimulate the consumers’interest and persuade them to purchase the commodity. As for imperative sentence, it will offer some advices or suggestions, and make the consumers feel closer. In textual metaphor, nouns and reference are used to organize the following text with the desire of arousing the consumers’interest, and the language of advertising will become coherent and innovative.In sum, in order to attain the style effect, three kinds of GM are frequently employed in English commercial advertisements. As a matter of fact, the research scope should be broadened in future, and the quantity of collected data should be enriched. Thorough views will be presented towards the GM in English commercial advertisements.