| With the rapid development of social economy, advertisements have penetrated all aspects of people’s life, which also form their own unique language style. Advertisements have various types, including business ones for selling goods, introductory advertisements made by each company or organization to improve their social status, and public service advertisements for appeal and so like. Among them, public service advertisements (which will be abbreviated to PSA in this thesis) are distinguished from others and play a vital part in social education. Since twenty-first century, Chinese public service advertisements have been prosperously developing, and especially after General Secretary Xi Jinping put forward the important guiding ideology—Chinese Dream, a bigger theme background is provided for the development of PSA.Taking the special essence of PSA into account and from the perspective of stylistics, the thesis is based on the corpus of PSA from American mainstream magazines:Time, Newsweek and Digest and Chinese Dream, and the research purposes of this thesis are:first of all, in the bases of English stylistic theories, the thesis studies the style of English PSA in details on graphological, lexical, syntactic, rhetorical and contextual levels to know features of English PSA to compensate for the related theories at home; secondly, the important guiding ideology of Chinese Dream and relevant PSA are introduced to the thesis, and analyses and contrasts can help audience better understand this term and the cultural factors those PSA carry; thirdly, contrasting and studying the differences and similarities of these two kinds of PSA and finding reasons for differences have reference for related translation study.And the following questions aid much in designing and finishing the thesis:1. As one of a sub-style of advertisements, whether stylistic features of English PSA abide by that theory of English advertisement, and how are those differences reflected if there are some?2. Comparing English PSA to Chinese one, especially those from Chinese Dream, are there any stylistic similarities and differences between them?3. What are the reasons causing those differences between these two kinds of PSA, what referential meaning does knowing those reasons have?Through analyzing and studying, the major findings of this thesis are summarized as follows:In the first place, as a sub-style of advertisements, owing to its special essence for non-profit, PSA’s lexis and syntax both are concise, and the former exploits numerals, simple noun phrases and certain verbs. As for the rhetoric, utilization of pun, alliteration, repetition and parallelism stands out while hyperbole is less used. Flexible usage of these methods helps to achieve textual cohesion.Moreover, PSA in American mainstream magazines, in contrast to those of Chinese Dream, generally differs in:those of Chinese Dream less employ numerals and having stronger cultural color with applying rhetoric device of allusion. Additionally, because of its own language nature, it can’t be analyzed from aspects of capitalization, inner structure of lexis, tense and voice etc.Ultimately, in the analyzing process, with the guidance of stylistic theories, by comparing to English PSA, the author points out the differences and similarities between English PSA and advertisement, and between English PSA and Chinese PSA; in terms of differences, causes for them are given, which may provide reference for their translation in the future.From what the author mentions above, analyzing language of English PSA in American mainstream magazines, this thesis concludes its stylistic features and further makes a comparison with those of Chinese Dream, and provides reference for their future translation. In terms of the research of PSA, this article is just a tentative study, and the author hopes that the findings can attract more researchers to pay attention to it and force them to do further study and exploration, which will attract more researchers and English learners. |
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