Rhetorical Relation Theory And Cohesion: Analysis Of Advertisements

Rhetorical Relation Theory (RRT for short) is a rather new theory. It draws heavily from two resources: Mann & Thompson' s Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST for short) and Halliday' s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL for short). RST is a pure structural theory from which the concept of rhetorical relations is borrowed. Halliday' s theory views language as a system and adopts a systemic-functional approach when dealing with linguistic phenomena. RRT combines the two theories to account for rhetorical relations in a systemic-functional way.This thesis is intended to relate RRT to cohesion. It attempts to answer two questions: (1) What is the relationship between RRT and cohesion? (2) What are the features of advertisements in terms of rhetorical relations?Through the challenge of Halliday' s cohesion model, the inadequacy of it is proved: it is relatively weak in dealing with implicit cohesive devices. However, RRT is quite strong in elaborating implicit cohesion. On the other hand, where RRT is comparatively weak is just where Halliday' s cohesion model shows its advantages. On the basis of the Two-level Textual Realization Model in RRT and Halliday' s cohesion model complementing each other, a modified cohesion model is established as the theoretical basis of the present research.In order to answer the questions, 24 items of advertisements are chosen as the typical texts to testify to the validity of the modified cohesion model, because this text genre is explicitly broken but implicitly cohesive. The rhetorical features of this genre will then be concluded after the analysis.At last, it is concluded that: (1) rhetorical relations play an important role in a coherent text; and (2) there are four rhetorical relations that are most frequently used in advertisements.The thesis consists of 6 parts: Introduction, Chapter 1~4, and Conclusion. Introduction introduces some background knowledge and serves as a prelude of the following chapters; Chapter One briefly reviews the previous research relevant to the present study; Chapter Two defines the most frequently used rhetorical relations in English, taking texts of native English from various sources as examples; Chapter Three concentrates on the relationship between rhetorical relations and cohesion,wherein Halliday' s cohesion model is challenged, and on the basis of this, an improved cohesion model is introduced; Chapter Four testifies to the validity of the new established cohesion model by analyzing advertisements and relevant conclusions are drawn accordingly. At last, Conclusion sums up the previous discussions and points out the significance of the present study.