A Contrastive Study On Interpersonal Meaning In English And Chinese Cosmetic Advertisement Based On Appraisal Theory

Interpersonal meaning refers to people expressing their own views on things through language,and affecting others' attitudes or behaviors,and thus establishing and forming certain interpersonal relationships.This thesis selects 70 English cosmetic advertisements and 70 Chinese cosmetic advertisements from the most authoritative magazines,namely Vogue and Cosmopolitan as the research object to study how interpersonal meaning is realized in cosmetics advertisement.Appraisal Theory established by Martin is used as the theoretical framework to study the interpersonal meaning of both two corpora in this study.The thesis analyzes the two sub-categories of Appraisal Theory: attitude and graduation,aiming to explore the distribution and realization of appraisal resources in both two corpora.In this study,UAM corpus tool is used as a research tool.Specifically,the similarities are reflected in: 1)both corpora use a large amount of appraisal resources to achieve interpersonal meaning.2)In the attitude system,the three subsystems of affect,judgment and appreciation are roughly consistent,and both English and Chinese Cosmetics advertisements tend to use appreciation resources.3)In the graduation system,force resource count the most majority,focus resource is rarely used.As it will weaken the tone and appear unconfident,so the soften resources are not used in the English and Chinese cosmetics advertisement.The differences are reflected in: 1)In the attitude system,the realization of affect resources in English cosmetic advertisement tends to employ in/security resources;while Chinese cosmetics advertisement are likely to use dis/inclination resources;2)In the graduation system,English cosmetic advertisements have a large amount of quantification resources.Compared with intensification in ECA,while Chinese cosmetic advertisements have more intensification resources so as to emphasize and strengthen the function and effect of goods and finally attract consumers.This study compares and analyzes the appraisal resources in English and Chinese cosmetics advertisements,and proves the feasibility of applying appraisal resource in English cosmetics advertisement and Chinese cosmetics advertisement.It points out the similarities and differences between English and Chinese cosmetics advertisements in expressing attitudes and conveying interpersonal meanings.In addition,this study can be used as a reference to the editing of cosmetic advertisement.