A Comparative Analysis Of Interpersonal Meaning In Cosmetics Advertising Texts For Different Genders

This thesis adopts Halliday’s Functional Grammar and Martin’s Appraisal Theory as its theoretical framework. By employing the approaches of quantitative, qualitative and comparative analysis, some similarities and differences are found in the realization of interpersonal meaning between the collected 50 CFATs and 50 CMATs. After the comprehensive and detailed research, it draws the following conclusion:The similarities in the realization of interpersonal meaning in cosmetics advertising texts for different genders are:(1) “Information-giving” plays the absolutely dominant role in speech roles.(2) A large number of declaratives are used.(3)Elliptical declarative clauses are widely used.(4) Low modal operators appear most frequently among all the modal operators.(5) The modal adjuncts of mood take the leading role among all the modal adjuncts.(6) “Reaction resources” and “intensification resources” are commonly used.(7)”Judgment resources” and “soften resources” are not found in the collected samples.The differences lie in the following aspects:(1) Declaratives and interrogatives are more frequently used in the CMATs than in the CFATs, while advertisers towards female prefer to use exclamatives and imperatives.(2) “Number resources” appear more often in the CMATs than in the CFATs.(3) Modal adjuncts and modal operators are more used in the CFATs than in the CMATs.(4) The amounts of “affect resources”, “happiness resources”, valuation resources” and “intensification resources” in the CFATs are much larger than in the CMATs.(5) “Endorse resources” are preferred in the CMATs than in the CFATs.(6) The number and the frequency of “quantification resources”and “sharpen resources” in the CMATs are twice as large as in the CFATs.As a tentative research, this paper has important implications in both theory and practice. In theory, it proves that mood, modality and appraisal theory are feasible to analyze the realization of interpersonal meaning in cosmetics advertising texts. In practice, some implications can be given to cosmetics designers when they design cosmetics advertising texts for different genders.