| Advertising has been playing a more and more important role in our daily life since economy and times stand on a new as well as challenging stage. Advertisements can be found everywhere. They reach people in subways, buses, hotels, elevators, streets and homes. Thus advertising has penetrated into our daily life, which makes writing advertisements of great significance.According to Halliday’s thematic structure theory of Functional Grammar, the information structure is closely related with thematic structure and thematic progression which are important devices in text analysis. With thematic structure, the insights in exploring how texts are organized can be gained. And the logical and coherent flow of information in a text would be understood if thematic progression patterns are chosen properly. Both among texts with different topics and texts sharing a same one, thematic progression makes differences and shows distinct pragmatic effects. Based on the reasons above, this thesis will explore the thematic structure as well as thematic progression in English advertisements.And this thesis, based on the theory of Systemic-Functional Grammar, takes Xu Shenghuan’s four basic thematic progression patterns as analytic framework and analyzes their use in42texts of English advertisements, aiming to get the answers of three questions:(1) What are the features of the usage of different themes in English advertisements?(2) Which thematic progression pattern is used most often and why?(3) What pragmatic effects do these four thematic progression patterns have in English advertisements?Through the analysis, the author concludes that:simple themes and experiential themes are used with the highest frequency; T-T pattern and R-T patterns are more favored; T-T pattern has the effect of detailing and emphasizing the subject, R-T pattern can lead to a new topic, R-R pattern is used to underline the rheme and T-R pattern can indicate connection between themes and rhemes. |
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