The Realization Of Interpersonal Meaning Of Written English Cosmetic Advertising From The Perspective Of Appraisal Theory

With the continuous development of social productivity, advertising is developed and becomes an indispensable part of social life of the public. Written Cosmetic Advertising, as a special genre of advertising, is a kind of persuasive, dominant communicative style and salesman-ship in print. Its function is to transfer the information of products, and its purpose is to attract consumers’ attention, to stimulate their interests in products and their desire for purchase, thus the goal of profit can finally be achieved. However, in order to attain the goal of profit, advertisers must negotiate and establish a good interpersonal relationship with potential customers by taking advantage of advertising language. Therefore, cosmetic advertising is full of interpersonal meaning. In the exploration of interpersonal meaning of advertising, Halliday’s Systemic-Functional Grammar is widely applied to discuss the realization of interpersonal meaning from the aspects of mood, modality and evaluation. But Martin holds that studying interpersonal meaning with Systemic-Functional Grammar is not comprehensive, thus he puts forward Appraisal Theory, which uses evaluative lexis as language resources to assess human behavior or things, as the supplement of interpersonal meaning.This thesis collects 85 pieces of cosmetic advertising about skin care from the original English fashion magazine and establish the Corpus. Evaluative lexis is labeled in appraisal resources in order to analyze the distribution of appraisal resources. This thesis attempts to answer the following two question:(1) How Appraisal Resources are distributed in written English cosmetic advertising?(2) How interpersonal function can be realized in written English cosmetic advertising through Appraisal Resources in a specific way?According to the research, it is found that among appraisal resources, Attitude is the most widely used resource in cosmetic advertising, and it is realized through Appreciation and Judgment, in which a large number of positive evaluative lexis are used to assess the advertised product. Besides, Graduation resource is frequently used to intensify and enhance the qualities, effects, functions of the product so as to attract consumers’ attention. What’ more, Engagement is seldom involved in cosmetic advertising. Dialogic Contraction is the main realization used to narrow dialogic space and repel other sources of attitude in order to influence consumers’ attitude directly.This thesis proves that exploring the interpersonal meaning in the cosmetics advertising with the theoretical framework of Appraisal Theory is feasible and effective. At the same time, it reveals the regularity of realization of the interpersonal meaning in the cosmetic advertising. In addition, this paper can also make contribution to the cosmetic advertisement writing.