A Functional Genre Analysis Of Product Advertisements

With the development of economy and technology, the world has gone into aninformation age. Information as an indispensable part in most people’s life transmitsthrough a variety of ways, such as advertisement, news reports, editorial, issue,entertainment and so on. Advertisement as the most effective and common way totransmit information has drawn more and more attention in everyday domestic life andreceived extensive attention from foreign and Chinese researchers. Whether people like itor not, and no matter whether they accept it or not, advertisement has filled our lives.This thesis is mainly based on Halliday’s (1994) Systemic-Functional Linguistics.By using the scientific tool of Wordsmith Concord tool, the thesis makes a constructiveexploration of the generic features of the product advertisements from the aspect ofHalliday’s metafunctions (ideational, interpersonal and textual functions) and Swales’(1990) and Bhatia’s (1993) genre analysis theories. First, set up a corpus of80productadvertisements. Most of the advertisements in the corpus come from newspapers andmagazines, such as Fortune, Newsweek and Time. Second, based on Swales’s movetheory and Bhatia’s seven move patterns of Standard Bank letters, the move pattern ofthe product advertisements has been studied. The findings show that most of the productadvertisements can be divided into four moves. Move one is mainly used to draw thereaders’ attention and inspire their interest. Move two is used to give information orshow the advantages of the product. Move three tries to persuade the reader finally takeaction to buy the product. Third, by using Halliday’s transitivity system theory and withthe help of concord tool, the thesis analyses the transitivity system of the advertisementsand find the material processes and relational processes are frequently used. The materialprocesses are used to enphasize the reality and objectivity of the product and therelational processes are used to describe the function of the product. Fourth, the moodand modality system has been studied based on Halliday’s interpersonal theory. Theresult of the analysis shows the declarative sentences take the highest proportion in product advertisements, followed by interrogative sentences. And the imperativesentences take the lowest proportion. The result fully reflects one of the productadvertisements’ genre features: introduce the products’ features and persuade thecustomers to purchase. Sixth, according to Halliday&Hasan’s (1984) cohesion theory,give an analysis of textual system of the product advertisements. Reference,ellipsis andrepetion occure frequently in product advertisements. It shows the language of productadvertisements is precise, vivid and persuasive. This is also one of the genre features ofproduct advertisements.Advertisement is a kind of persuasive genre. It aims to promote sales by the strategicuse of appealing and persuasive language. The research of the thesis has showed thespecial genre features and its language characteristics. It may provide valuable referencesto the English majors which are interested in English advertisement. And I also hope it cangive a great assistance for improving the writing ability for English advertising writers...