A Comparative Study Of Interpersonal Meaning In Chinese And English Cosmetic Advertising Texts

Interpersonal function is an important function of language. According toHalliday’s Systemic-Functional Grammar, interpersonal function is themetafunction that people use language to interact with other people, to establishand maintain relations with them, to influence their behaviour, to express theirown viewpoints on things in the world, and to elicit or change others’ opinions.Based on Halliday’s Systemic-Functional Grammar, this thesis studies theinterpersonal meaning of Chinese and English cosmetic advertising texts, whichare collected from magazines, brochures and websites, with thirty samplesrespectively. The comparative analysis is carried out in four aspects: mood,modality, evaluation and person, through which quantitative analysis andqualitative analysis are employed. This study examines ways of realizinginterpersonal meaning of Chinese and English cosmetic advertising texts and theirsimilarities and differences. Through the analysis, this thesis is intended to provethe feasibility of systemic functional linguistics in Chinese and English cosmeticadvertising texts and bring inspirations to the cosmetic advertising languagewriting.The analysis found that: There are similarities and differences between thetexts. The similarities are:1) of the four types of mood, declarative mood is themost frequently used one;2) in terms of modality, few high value modal operatorsare adopted. Instead, low and median value modal operators are preferred. Inaddition, compared to the adjuncts of polarity and modality and the adjuncts oftemporality, the adjuncts of mood are used more frequently;3) in the evaluationsystem, most of the adjectives and verbs convey positive evaluation;4) the secondpersonal pronouns are in highest frequency. The differences are:1) imperatives are used more frequently in English samples than in Chinese ones, while Chinesesamples have more exclamatory sentences;2) Chinese samples are inclined toadopt low value modal operators, while both low and median value modaloperators appear frequently in English samples;3) In terms of person system, thefirst singular person doesn’t appear in English samples while appears several timesin Chinese texts. In Chinese samples, there is a rhetoric usage of third person “她”to refer to the cosmetic product, while in English, there is no such usage. Based onthese detailed analysis, the thesis proves the feasibility of systemic functionallinguistics in analyzing the interpersonal meaning of cosmetic advertising texts.This thesis makes a comparative analysis of interpersonal meaning in Chineseand English cosmetic advertising texts, which provides a new perspective for boththe study of cosmetic advertising texts and systemic functional linguistics. It ishoped to bring some inspirations for the cosmetic advertising texts writing andoffer advice for the advertisers when they promote their cosmetic products into theinternational market. Besides, the thesis is expected to help consumers understandthe linguistic features of the cosmetic advertising texts and make rationaljudgment before purchasing products.