A Contrastive Study Of Interpersonal Meaning In Chinese And English Cosmetics Advertising Texts

One of the most important functions of language is interpersonal function. Halliday himself states that the aim to construct Systemic Functional Grammar is for the purpose of text analysis.Interpersonal function,as one of the three Metafunctions, refers to the function in which language is used to enable people to interact with other people,to express their viewpoints,to influence their behavior,and to establish and maintain relations with them,Based on the interpersonal function,fifty pieces of Chinese cosmetics advertising texts and fifty English ones are collected to make a contrastive analysis on interpersonal meaning through mood,modality,tense,person,and evaluation systems. The purpose of study is to find out whether the advertising discourse of cosmetics in each language,Chinese and English,carries the same or different characteristics while construing their interpersonal meaning so as to achieve their purpose of establishing a good image of their products and promising good effects on their customers.This study is intended as a contribution,small but worthwhile,to the development of implication of the basic theory of interpersonal metafunction in functional linguistic studies.On the basis of theoretical research,qualitative analysis is conducted in this thesis so as to examine how Chinese and English cosmetics advertising texts are represented from the perspective of interpersonal metafunction.Meanwhile,some similarities and differences can also be found.Through the whole contrastive analysis,the findings can be summarized as follows:Firstly,functional grammar is applicable in the contrastive analysis of Chinese and English cosmetics advertising texts.Secondly,there are some similarities between the Chinese and English cosmetics advertising texts:(1) the majority of the sentences in the Chinese samples and English ones are declarative mood;both samples share the same communicative function of exclamatives,interrogatives and imperatives,that is,to achieve their persuasive function;(2) in terms of modality,in both samples,there are few high value modal operators.Besides,the adjuncts of mood are used much more than the adjuncts of polarity and modality and the adjuncts of temporality;(3) the simple present tense and the future tense are popular in cosmetics advertising texts;(4) the second person is predominant in the Chinese and English samples.(5) both samples have the same target consumers in general,i.e.female consumers,so the wording in both shows female-orientated selection.Second,some differences between the Chinese and English samples are outstanding:(1) more exclamatory and interrogative sentences are used in the Chinese samples.However,imperative take a high proportion in the English samples than that in the Chinese ones.(2) more low value modal verbs are commonly used in the Chinese samples;but more median and low value modal operators,especially the median value modal,operators,are frequently used in the English samples.(3) in terms of the person system,the frequency of personal pronouns in the English samples is much higher than that in the Chinese ones;Chinese has two kind of forms "你"(ni) and "您"(nin) in the second person system.And "您"(nin) are usually used to show politeness and respect.However,English ones only have one form "you". The first singular person "我",which refers to the potential consumers,are used much more in the Chinese samples.But it has never appeared in the English samples. Meanwhile,the Chinese samples like using an inclusive-we.However,the English ones like an exclusive-we.Rhetorically,the third person "她" is employed instead of "它" in the Chinese samples to refer to the cosmetic product.But in the English samples,this kind of use is not found.(4) in appraisal system,the English samples emphasize on subjective affect and judgment while the Chinese ones pay attention to appreciation.Sometimes,their appreciations are a little more exaggerated so as to achieve their persuasive communicative function.The limitations of the study are shown as follows:there is a limitation in data collection.The choice of samples might be more or less subjective;due to the limited time and my academic capacity,some issues concerning the interpersonal function and discourse analysis are untouched,such as the interpersonal metaphor and tenor of discourse.Thus,the exploration is not yet very comprehensive or profound;due to the different cultural backgrounds,the categorization of appreciation has its limitation of subjectivity when analyzing the evaluation system of cosmetics advertising texts.Through above analysis and discussion,the tentative study of contrastive analysis can make some contribution to the development of implication of the basic theory of interpersonal metafunction in functional linguistic study.Besides.it can also give some helpful supplements to cosmetics advertising texts study and give advertising copywriters some helps and make them benefit from the practice.