A Metafunctional Study Of Sports English Advertisements

Nowadays, with the globalization of the world economy, more and more companies are selling their products abroad. English advertisements are important methods for them to promote their products abroad. With the entering of foreign products into China, relevant advertisements arise. As a result, researches on English advertising are becoming more and more useful and important. However, nowadays, most of these studies are from the lexical, rhetorical or syntactic perspectives. Even now the study of treating advertising as a discourse and analyzing it from the systemic-functional point of view is by no means enough. Owing to this situation, the author of this thesis makes a tentative endeavor to apply the theoretical claims of the Systemic-Functional Grammar (SFG) to the analysis of sports English advertisements to find the language features of sports English advertising, hoping to prove that the theories of SFG can be used to analyze sports English advertisements and are actually effective.When people use language to communicate with others, the language contains three kinds of functions: experiential function, interpersonal function and textual function. Halliday defines the three functions as metafunctions. As for the realization of the three functions, they are mainly achieved by transitivity, mood and modality, theme and cohesion respectively. Adopting the quantitative and qualitative method as the main methodology, the paper makes a detailed analysis of fourteen sports English advertisements within the framework of Halliday s three metafunctions. Using the theory of the three metafunctions, the author makes analysis of the embodiment of the experiential function, interpersonal function and textual function in sports English advertisements, which are realized through transitivity, mood and modality, theme and cohesion respectively. Therefore, it is proved that the Systemic-Functional Grammar can be used to analyze sports English advertisements and are actually effective.After the analysis, the findings are as follows:About the transitivity in which the experiential function is realized, sports English advertisements adopt different types of processes according to different narrative and descriptive purposes. Narrating-oriented advertisements often use the material process while describing-oriented advertisements tend to use mental and relational process.About the mood and modality in which the interpersonal function is realized, sports English advertisements usually adopt declarative mood, imperative mood and interrogative mood. Beside, sports English advertisements also use some modal adjuncts to realize corresponding functions.About the theme and cohesion in which the textual function is realized, sports English advertisements usually adopt the simple theme and unmarked theme. About the cohesion, ellipsis, repetition and conjunction are often used. The study of the thesis also has some limitations. The thesis also points out the limitations and research suggestions.The purpose of the thesis is to help advertisers make sports English advertisements from the systemic-functional point of view, achieving the advertisement effect more effectively. In addition, the author hopes that the study will be useful to realize the effect of systemic-functional grammar in practice.