An Analysis On Attitudinal Discourse Of Chinese Real Estate Advertisements

With the development of Chinese economy and people’s living standard, recentlythere is a substantial growth of Chinese real estate industry. At the same time, Chinesereal estate advertisements, which are closely related to Chinese real estate industry,take up big market share in the whole advertising market. Real estate advertisementsplay a critical role in propagating and promoting real estate, which link real estatedevelopers and potential customers. Real estate advertisements consist of severalcomponents, but in this thesis, we just lay emphasis on advertising language, which isthe most important component in advertisements. Because real estate advertisinglanguage is an effective tool to attract potential customers’ attention, invoke theirdesire, transmit products/services’ information and persuade them to purchase.Appraisal theory broadens interpersonal meta-function within Halliday’s SystematicFunctional Linguistics (SFL) and develops under theoretical framework of SystematicFunctional Linguistics, which is essential supplement to interpersonal meta-functionof Systematic Functional Linguistics. Although many scholars have studied Chinesereal estate advertisements from different perspectives, few scholars study Chinese realestate advertisements from the perspective of Appraisal theory. Under suchcircumstance, basing on Appraisal theory, we study Chinese real estate advertisinglanguage from the perspective of Attitude, one subsystem of Appraisal system.We believe there are plenty of attitudinal appraisal resources existing in realestate advertising language, so it’s significant to analyze attitudinal appraisalresources. The meanings are as follows: it would richen advertisements’ analysis; itcould strengthen the study of advertising discourse; it helps potential customersexactly understand and appreciate real estate advertisements as well as helpsadvertising designers create more effective advertising language; it contributes tobroaden the application domain of Appraisal theory as well as contributes to probehow to construe interpersonal relationship between real estate developers andpotential customers. The methodology of this thesis is that takes attitudianl system astheoretical tool, the main branch of Appraisal theory, and laborately analyzes50pieces of Chinese real estate advertisements collected from websites and local real estate companies with the quantitative and qualitative approach. This thesis studiesthe realization of interpersonal function through the analysis of attitudinal resources’distribution.This thesis plans to solve two research questions:1. What are the linguistic features of Chinese real estate advertisements?2. How does sub-category of attitudinal resources distribute and how doesinterpersonal function realize through attitudinal resources in Chinese real estateadvertisements?Through the detailed analysis and research of attitudinal resources in Chinesereal estate advertisements, it comes to conclusions:Firstly, comparing with other advertisements, real estate advertisements havetheir unique language features: the application of expressions with the meaning ofharmony and happiness, which emphasizes the concepts of “family” and“blessedness”; the application of expressions with the meaning of honor and elegance,which highlights potential customer’s distinguishing social status and identity; theapplication of technical terms of real estate industry, which directly transmitsinformation to potential customers--trustworthy quality.Secondly, in Chinese real estate advertisements, there are abundant attitudinalresources and they aren’t equally-deployed. Within attitudinal resources, Appreciationresources enjoy the first place, advertisers apply a great number of Appreciationresources to highly praise housing value in use and housing social value, in order tospur on potential customers’ desire to purchase. Affect resources enjoy the secondplace, because Affect resources are relatively subjective. Advertisers try to avoidusing Affect resources so as to highlight realness and objectivity of real estateadvertisements. Judgment resources enjoy the last place, which is used to judgehuman behavior whether are reasonable、lawful or not according to some sets of socialnorms. The aim of advertisements is to introduce and promote products/services,which has nothing to do with human behavior, so advertisers manage to reduce theuse of Judgment resources.This thesis is divided into5chapters. In the first chapter, it introduces researchbackground, purpose and significance of the thesis, data and methodology as well asorganization of the thesis; in the second chapter, it reviews previous studies ofAppraisal theory and advertisements both at home and aboard; in the third chapter, itsystematically introduces the appearance and development of Appraisal theory, aswell as elaborately describes attitudinal system and its subsystems; in the fourth chapter, it makes a detailed analysis of Chinese real estate advertisements from theperspective of Affect resources, Judgment resources and Appreciation resources aswell as it analyzes linguistic features of Chinese real estate advertisements; in the fifthchapter, we draw conclusions, point out the limitations as well as put forward thespeculations over further studies.