A Comparative Study On Interpersonal Meaning Of Chinese And English Automobile Advertising Texts

As a way of knowing new brands and learning about new cars, the appearance ofautomobile advertisement has shown an upward trend in recent years. They have become animportant component in commercial advertising. To some extent, automotive advertising isthe language used between advertisers and consumers presenting how their communicationtakes place. The analysis of interpersonal meaning of automobile advertisement can help usto figure out how the advertisers effectively communicate with the potential customers andconvince them to make decision to buy.As one of the three metafunctions in the systemic functional grammar, interpersonalfunction not only refers to the language which people use to build and maintain relationships,but also includes the use of language to influence the behavior of others. In this paper, withthe guidance of Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics theory, support by Thompson’sinterpersonal meaning framework, and Li Zhanzi’s development of interpersonal meaningframework, the author analyzes respectively the perspectives from mood, modality, tense,person and evaluation of 60 samples selected from the newspapers and car magazines inChinese and English. The author also tries to find out the factors which influence the differentways in realization of interpersonal meaning, tries to explore the various language means ofrealizing interpersonal meaning in automobile advertisements and provide effective ideas forwriting automobile advertisement.The present thesis conducts a comparative method when make an analysis betweenChinese and English automobile advertisements. Through the comparative analysis, we canfind put: Firstly, the dominating employment in the automobile advertisement is declarative.The exclamatives in Chinese automobile advertisement are used for information-giving, incontrast to the using of them in English automobile advertisement which is employed toexpress the emotion. Secondly, the frequency of employing the modulation in Chineseautomobile advertisement is higher than in the English. However, the modalization is morefrequently used in English automobile advertisement. The similarity is that in both Chineseand English automobile advertisement, high probability and usuality are used in the perspective of modalization, while low obligation and inclination are used in the perspectiveof modulation. Thirdly, with the perspective of tense system, most of the sentences in thesamples are in present tense and future tense. Other tenses also appear, but are rare. Thesentences employ the simple present tense for presenting the detailed information. The use offuture tense tells the customer the effect of purchasing the advertised vehicles so that to temptthe customer to buy. Fourthly, the frequency of the first person, the second person and thethird person is diverse lie in the dramatic culture difference between the Chinese and Englishspeaking countries. Finally, in term of the evaluation system, the use of the words hassimilarity in both Chinese and English automobile advertisements. The advertisers make thepositive expression through using adjectives, adverbs and nouns which also helps to establishthe relationships with the potential customers and performs the persuasive function.