A Study On Chinese Public Service Advertisements From The Perspective Of Appraisal Theory

Public service advertisement as a branch of advertisement aims to spread andintroduce moral ideas, behavioral norms and ideologies which are helpful to thedevelopment of human society. Due to their social effect, subjectivities andappealing characteristics, they have been analyzed by scholars and researchersfrom the perspective of stylistics, pragmatics, textual analysis and functionallinguistics. But the study of Chinese Public service advertisement from theperspective of Appraisal Theory is not so much. Therefore, fifty public serviceadvertisements broadcasted on China Central Television Station are analyzed fromthe perspective of the Appraisal Theory. And it attempts to answer the followingquestions：(1) How the appraisal resources are distributed in the public serviceadvertisements?(2) How the appraisal resources are applied to achieve persuasivefunction in the public service advertisements?Quantitative and qualitative methods are used to analyze the distribution ofappraisal resources. The study showed that appraisal resources were frequentlyemployed in public service advertisements and appeared320times in total.Attitudinal resources were the largest in number with246occurrences and took up77%of the total appraisal resources. The engagement resources occurred44timesand occupied13%. While the smallest proportion of the appraisal resources wasgraduation resource which occurred only30times and took up10%. Among theattitudinal resources, positive affect resources appeared40times, form which aconclusion could be obtained. Advertisers were likely to resort to positive affectresources to expose some social problems. The engagement resources were mainlyrealized by heterogloss. The quotation of other’s words could make the views morerational and reasonable. While as regard to graduation resources, the ones mostly used are force resources which are realized by numbers. The changes of numberscan tell the audience the seriousness of some problems and the results which aregot after some measures have been taken. Moreover, the appraisal resourcesemployed in public service advertisements can also be used to achieve persuasivefunction by resorting to emotional persuasion and rational persuasion.This paper showed that it was reasonable for Appraisal Theory to be used fortext analysis, and the analysis can help people to understand public serviceadvertisements well.