A Contrastive Study On The Interpersonal Meaning Of Person System In Chinese And English Commercial Advertising Texts

Interpersonal meaning is people use language to communicate with other people,for the purpose of establishing and maintaining relations, expressing their opinions ofthe things in the world and affecting other people’s attitude and behavior. The thesischooses the commercial advertising text as the research material. It is a very typicalfunctional type of discourse. The research is based on a corpus of10Chinesecommercial advertising texts and10English commercial advertising texts randomlyselected from famous Chinese or English magazines. Based upon the theory ofHalliday’s systemic functional grammar, I employ both qualitative and quantitativeapproaches to analyze the interpersonal meaning of person system in Chinese andEnglish commercial advertising texts contrastively. The study attempts to answer thefollowing questions:1.What are the differences of person system in realizing theinterpersonal meaning between English and Chinese commercial advertising texts?2. In what way is the realization of interpersonal meaning in Chinese commercialadvertising texts similar to or different from that of English commercial advertisingtexts?Through the above-mentioned analysis, it is found that for the purpose ofrealizing the interpersonal meaning of English and Chinese commercial advertisingtexts, the writers of Chinese commercial advertising texts and English commercialadvertising texts use various linguistic resources. There are several differences ofperson system in realizing the interpersonal meaning between English and Chinesecommercial advertising texts:1. in the10Chinese commercial advertising texts and10English commercial advertising texts, we find26and36pronouns respectively.That’s to say English commercial advertising texts incline to use more personpronouns to establish close relationships with the potential consumers;2. thefrequency of second person pronouns in English advertisements is higher than that inChinese ones;3. the second person pronouns used in Chinese commercial advertisingtexts involve different extent of politeness.Besides, in the way to realize the interpersonal meaning, Chinese and Englishcommercial advertising texts share some similarities and differences. The similaritiesare as follows:1. both “I” referring to the potential consumer in English commercial advertising text and “我” referring to the potential consumer in Chinese commercialadvertising text are used to realize the same interpersonal meaning;2. both the secondpronoun “you” referring to potential consumers in English commercial advertisingtext and “你” referring to potential consumers in Chinese commercial advertising textare used to realize the same interpersonal meaning. The differences are as follows:1.in English commercial advertising text, the plural first pronoun “we” in exclusivesense，referring to the advertiser, is used to realize the interpersonal meaning, while inChinese commercial advertising texts, the first person pronouns in exclusive sensealways tend to be omitted and replaced by the name of the service or product;2. inEnglish commercial advertising text, the plural first person pronoun “we” in inclusivesense is used to realize the interpersonal meaning, while in Chinese commercialadvertising text, the plural first person pronoun “我们” is seldom found;3. in Chinesecommercial advertising text, the polite form “您” referring to the potential consumeris used to realize the interpersonal meaning, while there is no polite form in English;4.in English commercial advertising text, the second person pronoun referring to theadvertiser realizes the interpersonal meaning, while the second person pronounreferring to the advertiser in Chinese commercial advertising text could be seldomfound;5. in English commercial advertising text, the third person pronoun “they”always carry textual function, while in Chinese commercial advertising text, the thirdperson pronoun “她” carry interpersonal meaning.Theoretically, this thesis extends the framework for the study of interpersonalmeaning from the perspective of systemic functional linguistics. Practically, itprovides the advertiser or copywriter with relevant lexical, semantical and culturalknowledge of translating or composing commercial advertising texts.