A Contrastive Study On Thematic Progression Patterns In English And Chinese Advertising Texts

Thematic Progression (TP) patterns and the relation between Theme and Rheme areimportant devices in discourse analysis. Thematic Progression patterns have immediateimpacts on text organization, coherence and logic flow of information. TP patterns play animportant role in the fluency and coherence of texts. According to Systemic FunctionalGrammar, each sentence can be divided into Theme and Rheme or the Theme part and theRheme part in the framework of any language. If messages are the sum of Theme andRheme, texts are the sum and concatenation of several messages. In order to make the textcoherent, the Themes and Rhemes in a text are linked and repeated in a logical semanticway, which is called Thematic Progression. In the framework of Halliday’s SystemicFunctional Grammar, abundant and profound studies have been conducted on TP patternsboth at home and abroad, concerning applications of TP patterns in listening and writing,TP patterns in journalistic texts, academic papers and advertisements for public service, etc.However, contrastive studies on TP patterns in English and Chinese advertisements are stillinsufficient.With the development of commercialization and informationalization of the wholesociety, advertising is playing a more and more important role in business activities, as aselling and information communicating device. The status of advertisements bring aboutabundant researches on advertising texts. This paper explored Thematic Progressionpatterns in English and Chinese advertisements by authentic data analysis and comparison.It aims to find answers to the following questions:(1) What differences and similarities canbe inferred from different frequencies of TP patterns in English and Chineseadvertisements?(2) Will the type of products influence the choices of TP patterns?This study is expected to help copywriters set up general models of text organizationof advertisements in their mind; the choice of TP pattern will make direct effects on thefunction of their advertisements; through the present study, copywriters can send andarrange information in a proper way so that the function of advertisements can bedeveloped further. The study can also help advertisement readers receive the information flow of advertisement exactly. According to the findings of this study, advertisementtranslators know about the different characters or features of advertisements in English andChinese, and practice these rules in their later work. In addition, advertisement learners canlearn the different text organizations of advertisements in English and Chinese according toTP analysis of advertising texts in this paper. Although the study is sampled withadvertisement, its results and effects are far beyond the scope of advertisement. The resultof this study can also be used as guidance and reference for linguistic study in other genres.