A Contrastive Analysis Of Realization Of Interpersonal Meaning In English And Chinese Cosmetics Advertising Texts

With the development of economy, the living standard of people has been greatlyimproved and the consumption pattern has been optimized. People gradually pay moreattention to beauty. Accordingly, there is a large market for cosmetics. As one of thepromotional methods, cosmetics advertising texts play a great role in promoting the sales.Generally speaking, the purpose of the advertisers is to persuade consumers to buy theproducts through the use of words in cosmetics advertising texts, which is in line with theinterpersonal meaning. Therefore, the study of the interpersonal meaning in cosmeticsadvertising texts is of great significance.After the analysis of the previous studies on interpersonal meaning in cosmeticsadvertising texts, it is found out that most of the studies merely focus on English orChinese discourses whereas the studies on comparison between English and Chinesediscourses are relatively few. To some extent, this neglects that different social andcultural factors have some influence on the realization of interpersonal meaning.Moreover, most of the studies analyze the interpersonal meaning from the perspective ofHalliday’s Systemic Function Grammar without consideration of Martin’s Appraisaltheory. Martin’s Appraisal theory deals with the speakers’/writers’attitude, judgment andvaluations, which develops and extends the Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammaraccount of the interpersonal meaning. Therefore, this thesis makes a contrastive study ofinterpersonal meaning of cosmetics advertising texts based on the integrated frameworkof Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar and Martin’s Appraisal theory.50authenticChinese cosmetics advertising texts and50authentic English cosmetics advertising textsare randomly selected from the famous magazines and analyzed from the following fourperspectives: mood, modality, person system, and appraisal resources with theemployment of quantitative approach, qualitative approach and comparative analysisapproach.After the detailed analysis, it is found out that both Chinese and English cosmetics advertising texts employ various linguistic resources to realize the impersonal meaning.And actually, there are some similarities and differences between them in the realizationof the interpersonal meaning. The similarities are listed as follows:(1) Declaratives aremost frequently used to realize the function of information giving.(2) Low value modaloperators are the preference of both Chinese and English discourses.(3) Both employlarge quantities of second person pronouns.(4) A large number of appreciation resources,especially "reaction" and "valuation" resources are used while few judgment resourcesare used.(5) Dialogic contraction especially "disclaim" resources are favored by bothChinese and English discourses.(6) Both of them tend to use the force resources,specifically "intensification" resources instead of the focus resources.The differences lie in the following aspects:(1) English cosmetics advertising textstend to use more imperatives while Chinese cosmetics advertising texts tend to use moreexclamatives.(2) There are more than twice times modal operators in Chinese cosmeticsadvertising texts than in English cosmetics advertising texts.(3) More pronouns,especially third person pronouns are used in English cosmetics advertising texts.(4)Chinese cosmetics advertising texts use more affect resources.(5) In terms of the affect,"security" resources and "satisfaction" resources are the preference of Chinese cosmeticsadvertising texts while "happiness" resources are the preference of English cosmeticsadvertising texts.(6) As to the "disclaim" resources,,"deny" resources are favored byChinese cosmetics advertising texts while "counter" resources are favored by Englishcosmetics advertising texts.(7) Regarding the "proclaim" resources, English cosmeticsadvertising texts use more than three times as many "endorse" resources as Chinesecosmetics advertising texts.This thesis tries to explain these differences from the perspective of differentthinking patterns and of different social-cultural factors, like uncertainty avoidance,collectivism vs. individualism, and high context vs. low context. Hopefully, this thesiscan shed some light on the composition and translation of cosmetics advertising texts.