A Study Of Interpersonal Meaning In Public Service Advertisements On Environmental Protection

As society is constantly developing,environmental problems are getting more and more serious.The appearance of environmental public service advertisement is to make every social member be aware of environmental problems and effectively deal with them.Environmental protection public service advertisement is the medium between the advertiser and the public,reflecting the interactive relationship between them.Studying the language of environmental public service advertisement can better help us understand how the advertisers(government agencies,advertising corporations and some enterprises)communicate with the audience through advertising language and convince them to carry out the action and regulate their behavior.Based on Halliday’s systemic functional grammar,the interpersonal function is one of the three metafunctions of language.The study of interpersonal meaning can not only reveal the relationship between people reflected by language but also understand how to influence others’ thoughts and behaviors with the help of language.Therefore,the study takes the interpersonal function theory in Halliday’s systemic functional grammar as the theoretical framework,uses the combination of quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze environmental public service advertisements from the standpoint of interpersonal meaning,and discusses the linguistic means of achieving interpersonal meaning.This study takes 150 public service advertisements from the Internet as the research corpus.UAM Corpus Tool is used to obtain effective data and analyze the realization of its interpersonal meaning.This study aims to answer the following two questions:1.What linguistic means are used to achieve their interpersonal functions in environmental public service advertisements?2.How do these linguistic means realize the interpersonal meanings in public service advertisements?As far as the first research question is concerned,the research findings indicate that the environmental public service advertisements realize the interpersonal meaning by mood system,modality system and person system.In the aspect of the mood system,the declarative mood was used most frequently,followed by the imperative and exclamative mood,and the interrogative mood is the least frequently used in the environmental public service advertisement.In the aspect of modality,both mood adjuncts and modal operators play an important role in helping the modality system to achieve its interpersonal function.In the aspect of the person system,advertisers achieve the interpersonal meaning of environmental public service advertisements primarily through the use of the first person,followed by the second person,with the least use of the third person.For the second research question,the findings of the study of the three linguistic means used to achieve interpersonal meaning are as follows:In terms of the mood system,the declarative mood is used to state and deliver essential information to the public in environmental public service advertisements.Through the use of the imperative,environmental public service advertisements successfully fulfill the verbal function of persuading,requesting and even commanding the audience to take action.The exclamative mood is used to provide information to the audience and ask for behavior in environmental public service advertisements,to arouse people’s urgent emotion for environmental protection.In environmental public service advertisements,the interrogative mood changes from seeking information from the other party to indirectly providing information to the other party,arousing people’s reflections about environmental protection.In terms of the modal system,the mood adjuncts convey to people that they should have a protective attitude towards the environment.The use of high and medium modal operators conveys the obligations and responsibilities that people should assume in their daily lives concerning the path of environmental protection.No low-value modal operators are used.In terms of the person system,the first person makes the speaker and the listener become a community of interests and responsibilities,and makes the advertiser bring himself into the audience group,indicating that the advertiser is audience-centered and easier for the audience to accept the views in the advertisement.The second person is interactive,which can shorten the distance between the advertiser and the audience,and make the listener more motivated and engaged in environmental protection;and the use of the third person shortens the psychological distance between advertisers and audience,and makes everyone think about how important environmental conservation is and how much responsibility they bear for it.The study has implications for how relevant departments,advertising agencies,and some enterprises can better use advertising language to communicate with the public,persuade and call on readers to pay attention to environmental protection,and better participate in protecting the environment.