Interpersonal Meaning Of Commercial Consumer Advertising Texts A Systemic-functional Approach

Language is used by people in daily communication not only to describe the world around them but also to interact with each other in order to establish and maintain appropriate relations between them. Such function is called interpersonal meaning of language in systemic-functional linguistics. The present paper sets out to investigate the interpersonal meaning of commercial consumer advertising texts based on an elaborated Halliday's conceptual framework. Data for the present research come from English magazines: Fortune, Newsweek and Time and ninety sample texts are randomly chosen from these foreign magazines for the analysis of interpersonal meaning of commercial consumer advertising texts. The research is carried out in four aspects of interpersonal meaning, namely, person system, mood system, modality and evaluation with an aim to find out the possible realization of interpersonal meaning in these four aspects in commercial consumer advertising texts. The analysis reveals that a variety of linguistic patterns has been used skillfully by the advertiser/writer to realize the interpersonal meaning derived from the tenor of commercial consumer advertising texts. It has the following findings: 1) the various uses of person pronouns help the advertiser/writer interact and negotiate with the potential consumers/readers; 2) mood structures have been used non-typically by the advertiser/writer to facilitate the interaction and negotiation with the potential consumers/readers; 3) modality is used to indicate the advertiser/writer's attitude and at the same time as a politeness device to enhance his or her interaction and negotiation with the potential consumers/readers; 4) evaluation has been realized linguistically and grammatically to perform two functions in commercial consumer advertising texts, namely, expressing opinions and maintaining relations.