A Comparative Analysis Of Chinese And American Public Service Advertisements:the Perspective Of Multimodal Discourse Analysis

Public Service Advertising (PSA), as a particular form of advertisement, takes a very significant position in advertising activities. It aims mainly to promote public awareness to society and reflect social situation as well as people needs. Meanwhile, it is the product of special history and cultural background. China and the US are generally deemed as typical representatives of Oriental and Western cultural values, which can be clearly revealed through their PSAs. Thus, this thesis attempts to make a comparative analysis of Chinese and American PSAs to illuminate the similarities and differences between them and then explore their different cultural values.With the development of modern science and technology, we are now in an "image era", in which many semiotic modes (e.g. language, sound and pictures) are deployed simultaneously in PSA to fulfill its communicative purpose. Therefore, the present study-applies60Chinese and60American print PSAs published in year2010-2014and makes a multimodal discourse analysis (MDA) on PSAs. Based on the theoretical franework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). Visual Grammar as well as the R. Martinec and A. Salways’s Theory of Image-Text Relations, this thesis makes a comparison of Chinese and American PSAs by exploring the construction and realization of the interactive meaning via visual and verbal modes. Both qualitative and quantitative methods are adopted in this study, and the results from the statistical analysis and detailed case studies indicate that MDA is applicable to compare PSA discourse from different countries.Through the comparison of verbal part, it suggests that the declarative mood and low modal value operators are most widely used in Chinese and American PSAs, and the second person takes the second place in Chinese and American PSAs. Three main differences are identified: firstly. Chinese PSAs are inclined to use much more strong moods such as interrogatives and exclamatives than those in American PSAs. Secondly. Chinese PSAs prefer high value modal operators while median ones are preferred by American ones.As to the comparison of image analysis, both Chinese and American PSAs take most eye-level in perspective analysis, both of them tend to apply the emotion appeal strategy through visual modality analysis. However, contrary to American ones. Chinese PSAs have more "offers" and more oblique images, while American ones prefer to use "demands" and frontal images: Close shot is the most widely used in American PSAs images while long shot is favored in Chinese ones:American PSAs employ more rational strategies than Chinese ones, they are more creative and abstract.In terms of image-text relationship, by comparison. Chinese and American PSAs are alike to a certain extent, they have similar ranks in the four kinds of image-text relations the image subordinating to text ranks first, then comes the complimentary relationship, the next is independent relationship, and the text subordinating to image only takes up a smallest ratio. By comparison. Chinese PSAs show more independent relation, while for American ones, they are more complimentary and more relations of image subordination tor text compared to Chinese ones.There are some cultural value factors to account for the similarities and differences, through the comparison of subject, responsibility, human-centeredness are embodied in both Chinese and American PSAs. Meanwhile, some differences between them can be explained by collectivism in China and individualism in America:large power distance social-culture in China and small power distance social-culture in America; high-context culture in China and low-context culture in American; Chinese being orientation and American doing orientation.Furthermore, the thesis shows that Chinese PSAs are increasingly paying attention to traditional cultural values in recent years, American PSAs do not change much and are still more creative, they show more intimate and equal relations between advertisers and readers and much easier to get the readers involved. In this aspect, Chinese PSAs still have a long way to go.