A Contrastive Study Of Affect Resources Between English And Chinese Public Service Advertisements

There are many studies of public service advertisements;however,only a few of them were made from the perspective of appraisal theory.This contrastive thesis aims to analyze the differences and similarities in frequency of affect resources,as well as the distribution patterns of affect resources between English and Chinese public service advertisements.In this thesis,200 pieces of English public service advertisements and 200 pieces of Chinese public service advertisements were compared on the quantitative use of affect resources.The lengths of every piece of public service advertisements were limited in 150 words.Independent Sample T-test was adopted to compare the means of the frequencies of affect resources in the English and Chinese public service advertisements.Distribution patterns of affect resources were compared from the distribution composition and the distribution evenness.The results show that there was similarities and differences in employing affect resources between English and Chinese public service advertisements.As for differences of frequency,the resources of ‘affect as process' showed significant differences between English and Chinese public service advertisements.The resources of ‘affect as quality' and the resources of ‘affect as comment' showed no difference between English and Chinese public service advertisements.Nevertheless,significant differences was found in frequency of the resources of propositional comment,attribute resources and circumstance resources between English and Chinese public service advertisements.As for the distribution patterns,there were similarities in employing affect resources.The pattern compositions in English and Chinese public service advertisements were similar.However,the distribution of affect resources of ‘affect as quality' in English public service advertisements were more even than in Chinese public service advertisements.By contrast,the distributions of ‘affect as process' and ‘affect as comment' in Chinese public service advertisements were more even than in English public service advertisements.The findings of this thesis may shed light on the study of appraisal theory and the comprehension of public service advertisements.