Critical Discourse Analysis Of Appraisal Resources In Chinese Fashion Advertising Copies:A Comparative Perspective

With the speedy pace of modern society, fashion industry has also boomed as many other industries. Instead of serving only as a simple covering as long before, different styles of fashion clothes are increasingly becoming an embodiment of people’s characters and cultural symbols of an era. The late1980s witnessed the rising of fashion market in China and various kinds of fashion magazines have been gradually born since then. In the mid-nineties, Rayli began its publication and was well received from the very start.20years after, Rayli is now still one of the most popular female fashion magazines in China. As for the various fashion advertising copies in Rayli, which are the analytic focus of the present thesis, though much about them has changed through time, they have been always playing an essential part in fashion promotion and fashion leading.Appraisal Theory develops out of the interpersonal meta-function within Systematic Functional Grammar to study the evaluation, attitude and emotion in language, which is further categorized into three parts:Attitude, Engagement and Graduation. Appraisal Theory is effective to help explore how propositions and proposals in a text are interpersonally positioned. In general, advertising discourses writers make the most of appraisal resources to describe the promoted products or services and express their attitudes or comments on these products or services in the hope of successfully making a purchase. Another main part together with Appraisal Theory to form the complete framework of the present thesis is Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework under Critical Discourse Analysis. The three dimensions are Description, Interpretation and Explanation. The dimension of Description describes the linguistic features of discourses; Interpretation is concerned with the process of discourse production; and Explanation links discourse features and structures to the influence of society and social structures. CDA and Fairclough’s analytic framework have been mainly used to study news discourses, which, instead of being seemingly objective and impartial, are embedded ideologies expected to be accepted by audience and also show power relations. As a matter of fact, similar to news discourses, advertising discourses also possess hidden ideologies and power relations.Methodologically, the sample-based study in the present thesis presents a qualitative and quantitative analysis of50fashion advertising discourses chosen from Rayli from a comparative perspective. Two periods are discussed in this thesis:the period of the mid-1990s and the present stage, with25copies for each period. Through a detailed analysis within the combinative framework, it is concluded that whenever fashion advertising copies are written, there are often a large number of appraisal resources to convey advertisers’ attitudes towards the promoted products or services. And in spite of some variations in the use of appraisal resources, advertisers are always trying to make a purchase rather than objectively introduce something. On the other hand, there really exist some changes in the distribution and planning of appraisal resources in them through time due to social changes, especially changes in fashion industry and market. It is the most prominent change that fashion advertising copy writers now start pay more attention to people’s inner feeling and psychological satisfaction when people are in the promoted clothes and try hard to show advertisers’ authorities to rival their competitors.The significance of the present thesis is first to prove that the feasibility of the application of Appraisal Theory to CDA, revealing the characteristics of language use in fashion advertising discourses in female fashion magazines and the changes on the levels of lexis and grammar from comparative perspective, thereby enriching the scope of CDA research content and approaches. Secondly, it is to remind advertisement readers that they should keep a cool head while appreciating advertisements. Last but not the least, it is expected to shed light on future language teaching and to suggest that more attention be paid to the cultivation of students’ ability to critical reading and thinking.