A Contrastive Analysis Of English And -Chinese Public Service Advertisements Based On Appraisal Theory

Advertising, as the most extensive message transmission medium, is a propaganda tool for people to deliver information to the society openly and widely. With its fast development and vast spreading, advertising has become an important part of our daily life. As one branch of advertising, public service advertising is the kind of advertising that serves the public as a form of nonprofit, the purpose of which is to advocate core values and dedicate to public welfare and interests for moving forward to a better and civilized society. It is obvious that a large number of public service advertisements exist in both China and foreign countries. Despite sharing the similar purposes and functions as public service advertisements(PSAs in short below), there are supposed to be some differences between English and Chinese public service advertising for their distinctive cultural values. The present study is devoted to comparing these two kinds of public service advertisements within the framework of Appraisal Theory in order to find out the similarities and differences between them. Appraisal Theory, as an extension and development of Systemic Functional Linguistics, is meant for the study of attitudes negotiable in texts.The thesis has selected 30 pieces of English PSAs and 30 pieces of Chinese PSAs,with Chinese PSAs collected from the CCTV and the website www.cnpad.net and English PSAs from some influential magazines such as Newsweek, Fortune and Time.For a better and clearer understanding of the appraisal resources existing in PSAs, the data is subdivided into two categories: Pro-Environmental type and Social Service type.Combining quantitative with qualitative methodology, the thesis intends to explore the following three research questions: 1) What are the similarities and differences of attitude resources in sample English and Chinese public service advertisements? 2)What are the similarities and differences of engagement resources in sample English and Chinese public service advertisements? 3) What are the similarities and differences of graduation resources in sample English and Chinese public service advertisements?Through the contrastive analysis, some similarities and differences in the applications of appraisal resources have been discovered in English and Chinese public service advertising. On the whole, more appraisal resources have been discovered in Chinese public service advertising than those in English public service advertising. In the category of Pro-Environmental PSAs, the similarities between English and ChinesePSAs are: 1) within attitude system, appreciation resources are the mostly used; 2)within engagement system, entertain resources take up the most percentage and a vast majority of dialogic contraction resources are realized through disclaim; 3) within graduation system, force resources have won a great advantage over focus. On the other hand, differences between them are as follows: 1) within attitude system, English PSAs prefer to apply more valuation resources while Chinese PSAs tend to adopt more reaction resources; 2) within engagement resources, dialogic expansion resources are more favored in English PSAs while dialogic contraction resources are more used in Chinese PSAs; 3) within graduation system, English PSAs adopt more intensification resources while Chinese PSAs are inclined to use more quantification resources. In the category of Social Service PSAs, the similarities between English and Chinese PSAs are: 1) within attitude system, appreciation resources are the mostly applied; 2) within engagement system, dialogic contraction resources are more used than dialogic expansion; 3) within graduation system, force resources have won an upper hand than focus. For another, differences are listed out: 1) within attitude system, English PSAs adopt very few affect resources while there are quite a lot of them in Chinese PSAs; 2)within the engagement system, English PSAs adopt both disclaim and proclaim in dialogic contraction while dialogic contraction resources are totally realized by means of disclaim in Chinese PSAs; 3) within graduation system, English PSAs adopt both force and focus resources while no focus resources are found in Chinese PSAs.To sum up, the thesis is an attempt to contrast English and Chinese public service advertising within the framework of Appraisal Theory, which can serve as a complement to the current related studies. The findings are intended for a better understanding of public service advertising discourse.