论文总字数：34259字

摘 要

在过去几十年中，许多语言学家从不同角度致力于广告语篇的研究，涉及语音、词法、句法、认知特征及其文化内涵。近年来，广告话语的人际意义引起诸多学者的兴趣和关注。本文旨在以系统功能语法为框架，以英语广告语篇为载体，从人称系统、语气系统和情态系统三个方面研究广告语篇中人际意义的表达，对英文广告如何达到传递信息，拉近广告人与广告受众者之间距离为交际目的，对广告如何更好地实现其在人际交流中的人际意义进行讨论。

关键词： 人际意义；系统功能语法；人称系统；语气系统；情态系统

Contents

1. Introduction １

2. Literature Review １

3. Systemic-Functional Grammar and Interpersonal Meaning ３

3.1 Introduction to Systemic-Functional Grammar ３

3.2 Introduction to Interpersonal Function ４

3.3 The Interpersonal Meaning of English Advertising Discourse ４

4. Person System in English Advertising Discourse ５

4.1 Person System ５

4.2 The Realization of Person System ５

4.3 Case Study---Iphone4s ７

5. Mood System in English Advertising Discourse ９

5.1 Mood System ９

5.2 The Realization of Mood System ９

5.3 Case Study---English Water-Saving Advertising １０

6. Modality System in English Advertising Discourse １２

6.1 Modality System １２

6.2 The Realization of Modality System １２

6.3 Case Study--- Mercedes-Benz Advertisement １３

7. Conclusion １４

Works Cited １６

1. Introduction

With the development of economy and the advancement of society, the advertisement exists in every corner of our life. As an important means of information transmission, it becomes indispensable in public life. American Marketing Association defines the advertisement as: Advertising is the non-personal communication of information usually paid for and usually persuasive in nature about products, services or ideals by identified sponsors through the various media (Qi Yunfang, 2003:5). The success of advertisements to a great extent depends on their languages. As the most widely used language in the world, English will become more communicative when combined with advertisements.

Systemic-functional grammar is a grammatical theory first proposed by the Britain linguist M. A. K. Halliday. Different from the traditional grammar and the transformational-generative grammar, the systemic-functional grammar concerns the speakers’ meaning potential, that is, what the speaker will express, rather than what he can express and what he focus on is the relationship between the discourse and the social context. In the systemic-functional grammar, Halliday proposed three meta-functions of language: the ideational function, the interpersonal function and the textual function. The interpersonal function means that language, apart from transmitting information, can express the speakers’ identity, status, attitudes, motivations and so on. Through this function, the speaker becomes involved in certain context of situation to convey his attitudes and attempt to influence the attitudes and behavior of other (Hu Zhuanglin, 2005:307). Person, mood and modality are three significant concepts of the interpersonal function, also the main approaches to realize the interpersonal function. Therefore, this paper, depending on some successful English advertising discourse and the theory of the interpersonal function, will analyze these advertisements from the perspective of the person, mood and the modality, aiming at how the advertisement realizes its goal of persuasion and government.

2. Literature Review

The advertisement, a condensed and comprehensive art, plays an important part in the modern society. Advertising English, as an applied language, draws wide attention from different social fields because of its specific effects and features of conveying information. So far, many experts, domestic or alien, study English advertising discourse from different aspects. For example, Geoffrey Leech, the forerunner to analyze advertising discourse, studied its stylistic features and laid the foundation for the following advertising research (Leech, 1996:208).

In the recent years, as the systemic-functional grammar sprang up, the study of the interpersonal meaning of a particular discourse becomes prevalent in the academic world. For instance, Huang Guowen focused on the advertising discourse from the functional aspect (Huang Guowen, 2000:110); Li Zhanzi paid attention to the means to realize the interpersonal speech in television advertising discourse (Li Zhanzi, 2002:87). In 1983, Trevor and Pateman finished How is understanding an advertisement possible? (Pateman and Trevor, 2012:99). Although these writings did not aim at English advertising discourse, their research offered valuable theories and experience for the later study.

The former scholars studied advertising discourse from various aspects, but few people comprehensively studied the uses of person, mood and modality of advertising discourse in detail from the perspective of systemic-functional grammar. According to Halliday, there are three meta-functions in the linguistic system, one of which is the interpersonal function meaning that language, in the daily life, plays an important part in establishing and maintaining the social relationships between people. Halliday argued that in linguistic communication, the speaker not only expresses his own ideas but also influences the hearers’ attitudes or behavior, and their relation is dynamic. In systemic-functional grammar, language is seen as a product of social activity. As a means of social interaction, language serves different functions. This thesis will analyze the person system, the mood system and the modality system according to Halliday’s systemic-functional grammar to find out how the English advertising discourse reach its goal of persuasion and government, with the hope of finding the features and regularities of language application and providing effective ideas for English advertising writing.

3. Systemic-Functional Grammar and Interpersonal Meaning

3.1 Introduction to Systemic-Functional Grammar

M .A. K. Halliday is one of the major representatives of London School. He focused his attention on the context of situation and the system aspect of language. Halliday is best-known for his systemic-functional grammar, which is a sociologically-oriented functional linguistic approach. Also, systemic-functional grammar is regarded as one of the most influential theories in the twentieth century. It has been having great influence on the other disciplines related with language, such as, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, anthropological linguistics, computational linguistics, linguistic translation and so on.

There are two inseparable components for the integral framework of systemic-functional grammar: systemic grammar and functional grammar. Systemic grammar is a theory aiming to elaborate the internal relations in language as a system network. And this system comprises a series of subsystems, from which language users make choices. Different from systemic grammar, functional grammar attempts to explain that language is a means of social interaction. Halliday defines a functional grammar as “essentially a natural grammar, in the sense that everything in it can be explained, ultimately, by reference to how language is used”. In the process of human language analysis, Halliday proposed seven functions of children’ s language patterns:(1) the instrumental function; (2) the regulatory function; (3) the interaction function; (4）the personal function; （5）the heuristic function；（6）the imaginative function; and (7）the informative function（Hu Zhuanglin, 2005:311). Later Hu Zhuanglin argued that the adults’ language becomes much more sophisticated as there are much more functions for it to serve, and the original seven functions are gradually reduced to three meta-functions, but much more abstract and highly coded. They are the ideational function, the interpersonal function, and the textual function.

The ideational function aims to organize the experience of the real or imaginary world of the language users. It tries to express the attitude, evaluation, feelings and emotions of the speaker. The interpersonal function aims to establish or maintain social status in a society. It is regarded as the most important sociological use of language. The textual function is one aiming to organize the texts, written or spoken, and makes them coherent within themselves to fit the particular context of situation where they are used (Dai Weidong, 2010:11).

3.2 Introduction to Interpersonal Function

In the systemic-functional grammar, M. A. K. Halliday proposed three meta-functions of language: the ideational function, the interpersonal function and the textual function. The interpersonal function expresses the individual relationships in society by making the most of language, that is, people give interpersonal meaning to sentences through the process of social communication and interaction. Halliday argued that the interpersonal meaning mainly proceed in clauses and realized through person, mood and modality. Li Zhanzi pointed out that the interpersonal function can be actually realized on the level of discourse. When we are discussing the interpersonal meaning, the point of departure and the goal of discourse should be on the level of discourse. As such, we can conclude that the analysis of the interpersonal meaning can never be separated from the discourse.

3.3 The Interpersonal Meaning of English Advertising Discourse

The analysis of the interpersonal meaning is closely related to the discourse, and the advertisement serves as the bridge of public communication by virtue of magnificent or conspicuous vocabulary. The advertising discourse, an evocative language with intensively persuasive function, aims at motivating the public to achieve some economic or political interests. Therefore, from the types of advertising discourse, it consists of the persuasive discourse because of the dominance of the interpersonal meaning and the subordination of the ideational function. In the recent years, the domestic and alien scholars have been studied the thematic pattern and the discourse function of the persuasive language, but they were not involved in the interpersonal meaning of advertising discourse, let alone that of the English advertising discourse.

1. Person System in English Advertising Discourse

4.1 Person System

Halliday believes that the interpersonal system consists of the interpersonal meaning in the form of personal pronouns or possessive pronouns. In advertising discourse, the practical application of person is not always in correspondence with the first person, the second person, or the third person in grammar. For example, the first person can refer to the advertiser, the consumer, even the advertiser and the reader. So, in advertising discourse, the person is much more complicated .That is why the advertiser tends to use the person system to establish an intimate atmosphere and bridge the distance with the reader, then improve the persuasion of the advertisements.

4.2 The Realization of Person System

In the traditional grammar, Person, as a grammatical category, indicates the number or nature of participants in a particular situation. Usually, the differentiations between persons are explained by verbs or related personal pronouns. As a relatively fixed part in grammar, person is inescapably discussed in any grammatical books, either its forms or its syntactic functions. Muhlhausleramp; Harre regard this kind of grammatical study as grammatical approach of persons. And Zhang Daozhen in his Practical English Grammar differentiated persons from single or plural number or case.

According to the roles relation indicated by the persons, the person system can be realized by the first person, the second person and the third person. The first person often refers to the speaker or speaker and others. For example, in advertising discourse, “we” often refers to the manufacturer or the product supplier; “I” tends to mean the advertiser or certain authoritative expert, even some consumer once used this product. The second person refers to the receiver and the third person often refers to the other participants other than the speaker and the hearer. For instance, “He/She” usually points someone who did not use the products, and then kind of this people is separated by the third person. The following thesis will briefly focus on the realization of the person system from the first and the second person.

1. “We” for the advertiser

Example 1

We would like to thank the members in practice of the chartered institute of Management Accounts for Awarding us with this prestigious accolade. We’d also like to thank our local business bankers for their commitment. By having them in every branch we are able to offer face-to-face consultations and make on the spot decisions. For a moving to HSBC’s brochure visit our website, call us or pop into your local branch. We look forward to helping your business become a winner (qtd. in Liu Chun, 2008:98).

This is an advertisement for Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, HSBC for short. In this banking advertisement, “we”, “us” and “our” all mean HSBC, while “you” and “your” refers to the readers. In this situation, the relation between the HSBC and the reader is the most direct.

1. “You” for the common reader

The usage of the second person “you” will make the written language more colloquial and mark the reader’s identity more clearly.

Example 2

You will enjoy learning French at Alliance and you will enjoy the social and business rewards it brings to you. W e run a range of courses at all levels and times to make sure wee fit in with you life style. And we give you all the advice you need and a free assessment before you start (qtd. in Liu Chun, 2008:98).

This is an advertisement of language training class, in which, “you” and “your” will make the reader realize that they are the “you” in the advertisement, and a unconscious conversation seems to start between the advertiser and the reader, with a natural reduced distance between them.

4.3 Case Study---Iphone4s

In advertising discourse, the personal pronouns are used to establish and maintain the interpersonal relation between the speaker and the listener. In the advertisement of iphone4s, the advertiser also makes the most of the personal pronouns to promote his relations with the readers, of which the first and second personal pronouns are usually used. The following is the iphone4s advertising.

Example 3

Iphone4s

Iphone4s was ground breaking, it is one of the best

products we’ve ever designed, and it is going to become the

No.1 smart phone in the world. “So we have this challenge.

How do you improve something that is so extraordinary……

“We’ve thought through every square of millimeter of what’s inside 

theiphone4s.With the new duo core A5 chip, it’s so much faster. The 

new camera is incredible, because with IOS and iCloud, and with 

Siri, your phone can do things no other phone ever done.

Iphone4s is the most amazing iphone yet.（www.overseaen.com）

According to the analysis, the frequency and number of the personal pronouns used in the iphone4s advertisement are revealed in the following table.

From the table, we can find that the first personal pronouns “we” are used

for 13 times, which greatly bridges the distance between the advertiser and the

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