从系统功能语言学的角度分析英语广告语言

论文总字数：27094字

摘 要

随着商品经济的不断发展，广告日益渗透到人们生活的各个方面，成为了现代社会经济生活中不可缺少的一部分。广告语言文字，作为广告的重要组成部分，也因其特点吸引了众多的研究目光。本文首先介绍了英语广告的特点，指出了英语广告所达到的效果; 然后从系统功能语言学入手，从语言的元功能和语境两个方面对英语广告语言进行了分析，旨在让厂商更好的运用广告宣传自己的商品，也能够让消费者更好的了解广告特点，从而从中获取更多的有用信息。

关键词：系统功能语言学；广告英语；元语言功能；语境

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. The Theoretical Foundation of the Study 2

3. The Analysis of English Advertising Language from the Perspective of Metafunction 2

3.1 In the Aspect of the Ideational Function 4

3.2 In the Aspect of the Interpersonal Function 4

3.3 In the Aspect of the Textual Function 6

4. The Analysis of English Advertising Language from the Perspective of Context 7

4.1 In the Aspect of Field 7

4.2 In the Aspect of Tenor ………………………………………………9

4.3 In the Aspect of Mode 10

5. Conclusion 11

Works Cited 12

1. Introduction

Advertising is designed by producers or sellers to promote their goods or services to customers through passing attractive information openly and widely. With the fast development of the commodity economy and economic globalization, advertising is increasingly becoming more and more indispensable in economic lives. Therefore, understanding the characteristics of advertising language is of great prospect.

Successful advertising can make a profound impression on the public to what it has advertised. “One of the standards to measure the qualified and successful commercial advertising is to see whether it meets the requirements of the United States ES Lew raised, namely the principles of AIDA: Attention, Interest, Desire and Action.” (Liu Changying, 2006: 25-26) Successful advertisements should have at least two functions: promoting the desire of buying and prompting the action of buying. Of course, there is no doubt that the colorful and vivid advertising has extraordinary beauty and power, which gets consumers immersed in the joy of the imagination of having the goods and services. After that, they unconsciously accept the guidance of advertising and have the desire to buy. Finally they will buy the product happily. There is a wine advertisement, which can serve as an example:

To me, the past is black and white, but the future is always color. 对我而言，过去平淡无奇;而未来，却是绚烂缤纷。(轩尼诗酒)

The “past” and “future”, “black and white” and “color” in the advertisement are obvious but strong comparisons. By using these two comparisons, the producers want to convey such information to the customers: if you buy our products, you will also have a colorful future. Everyone loves a beautiful future, so don’t you have the desire to buy one when you read this advertisement?

From this example we can see that advertising conveys useful information through language. In other words, the language is a necessary part of advertising operations. Advertising language has many features. So many scholars, home and abroad, have done many researches from different aspects, such as culture, politics, aesthetics and so on. This paper writes from the advertising language itself and analyses the advertising language from two perspectives of Systemic Functional Linguistics, namely the metafunctions and the context.

2．The Theoretical Foundation of the Study

Systemic Functional Linguistics was first created by the English linguist M.A.K Halliday. Functional linguists pay their attention to the meaning potential of the speakers, namely what the speakers would like to express, instead of what they can say. The research focus of Systemic Functional Linguistics is the relation between the discourse and the social context. ( Halliday, 1985: 20) The kind of meaning it describes can be seen from two aspects：the language itself and the context.

Seen from the aspect of language, the system contains three metafunctions: the ideational, the interpersonal, and the textual function. The ideational function is to organize the speaker or writer’s experience of the real or imaginary world. It corresponds closely to the descriptive function, but it is broader because it also includes the expression of the speaker’s attitude, evaluation, feelings and emotions. The interpersonal function is to indicate, establish, or maintain social relationships between people. It expresses the speaker’s role in the speech situation, his personal commitment and assessment of the social relationship between the addressee and himself. The textual function is to organize written or spoken texts in such a manner that they are coherent within themselves and fit the particular situation in which they are used.( Dai Weidong amp; He Zhaoxiong, 2013: 11 )

Seen from the context, it contains field, tenor and mode. The field means what happens, namely the social activities caused by the language. The tenor means the social roles of the participants and the relations among them, namely who talks to whom and what are their feelings. The mode means the function of the language in communications. (Thompson, 2000: 29)

With the theory above, we will analyze the English advertising from the two aspects concretely.

3．The Analysis of English Advertising Language from the Perspective of Metafunction

3.1 In the Aspect of the Ideational Function

The ideational function is concerned with “ideation”—grammatical resources for construing our experience of the world around us and inside us. In advertisements, it is important to use the advertising language to create a link between the customers’ experience and the promotion of their products. Only in this way, are customers likely to be attracted, and then buy the products if they have the need.

One of its major grammatical systems is transitivity, the resource for construing our experience the flux of “goings-on”, as structural configurations; each consisting of a process, the participants involved in the process, and circumstances attendant on it. For example, [Location:] in the open glade [Actor:] the wild rabbits [Process:] danced [Accompaniment:] with their shadows. (Matthiessen and Halliday, 2009: 54) Specifically, on the transitivity, the process can be divided into the six kinds: the material process, the mental process, the verbal process, the behavioral process, the existential process and the relational process.

Different process types reflect different physical properties of significance. The material process is the process of doing something. It expresses the notion that some entity “does” something. The “entity” is termed as actor, the “something” is termed as goal. The mental process is the sensing process which involves a senser and a phenomenon. The senser is conscious being who is thinking, feeling or seeing something. The phenomenon is what is felt, thought, or seen. In advertisements, the two processes are reflected through using words describing feelings, which enhance the objectivity and authenticity of advertisements as well. So in the advertising language, they are used frequently. Here are some examples.

Take time to indulge. 尽情享受吧！（Nestle Ice-cream，雀巢冰激凌)

The Globe brings you the world in a single copy. 一册在手,纵览全球。(《环球》杂志)

In these two advertisements, none of them uses the word “buy”，because in English, the word “buy” has the meaning of “to obtain something by money”, which may cause a feeling of forcing people to consume. Here, we can find the word “take” and “bring” actually mean the process of purchasing and they are the material process. Producers avoid the word “buy” consciously to promote their products more objectively. In this way, when customers read these two advertisements, they are more inclined to buy them. At the same time, the word “take” and “bring” make customers feel that they really need to take some action, namely buying the product at once. Take a look at examples:

Enjoy Coca-Cola.(Coca-Cola) 请喝可口可乐。（Coca-Cola，可口可乐，美国）

Feel the new space. 感受新境界。（Samsung，三星电子，韩国）

Share moments. Share life. (柯达胶卷)

These three advertisements above use the word “enjoy”, “feel”, “share” to express the emotions. It is actually the mental process. They try to tell the customers buying their products can bring them good emotions and make their lives much more interesting and pleasant. As a result, more and more customers are willing to buy those products to make their lives more colorful. In other words, the aim of producers who want to use advertisements to promote their sales is reached.

3.2 In the Aspect of the Interpersonal Function

The interpersonal function is concerned with the interaction between the speaker and addressee(s)—the grammatical resources for enacting social roles in general, and speech roles in particular, in dialogic interaction, i.e. for establishing, changing and maintaining interpersonal relations. One of its major grammatical systems is mood, the grammaticalization of speech function. (Matthiessen and Halliday, 2009: 53-54) English advertising is a functional variety or a genre in the modern English, whose function is to provide information and persuade other people.(Chen Qigong, 2005: 45-46) So in the advertising, the interpersonal function can be reflected by the interaction between the producers and the potential customers. It means that the producers need to use the advertising to establish relationship with the potential customers.

In daily interactions, people constantly change their communicative roles. No matter what changes have happened in the roles, there are still two main roles: "give" and "demand.” In the communication, what is “given” and “demanded” can be not only “information”, but also “goods and services”, which is particularly obviously shown in the advertising. On the one hand, advertisements provide useful information, but their ultimate aim is to promote the goods or services they have advertised to potential customers. In other words, no matter how advertising emphasizes on the artistic and other features of the language, it can not conceal its nature of giving and requiring, namely giving and requiring customers. To get excellent results, they have to choose appropriate mood to convey information effectively and try their best to attract consumers and grab their attention with advertising.

Different moods have different functions. Imperative sentences are apt to build a relationship of “demanding” and “giving” between producers and customers. Questions are more direct to express the meaning of interaction. At the same time, when reading questions, readers tend to have interest in finding out the answers by themselves. Negative sentences seem to provide negative information, but in reality, they stress the information they provide and make the readers accept the information willingly. For example:

Ask for more.渴望无限。（百事流行鞋）

Rejoice: start ahead. 飘柔：成功之路，从头开始。

Are guidebooks the only way to a city’s soul?

Levi"s: quality never goes out of style.李维斯（牛仔服装）：质量与风格共存。

Impossible made possible．使不可能变为可能。（佳能打印机）

Never Stop Thinking! (探索未来，永无止境!) 英飞凌科技公司

The first two advertisements are simple sentences. The word “ask” in the first one and “start” in the second one, both of them seem to ask people to buy these products. At the same time, the two sentences are imperative sentences. They really reflect the relationships of “demanding” and “giving” between the producers and customers. The third example is an advertising of Singapore. It is a question. When reading it, you may ask yourself the question and want to find the answer. In the process, your interest has been successfully aroused and the aim is reached. The last three advertisements are statements and all of them use negative words. They try to stress and convey such information to customers: we are the superior companies, so you can trust us and choose us all the time. In return, we will give you much more surprise. When you read these advertisements, will you take some action? I think the answer is yes.

Through the mood of suggestion, request and so on, the advertising can make customers accept their opinions and buy their products unconsciously and willingly.

3.3 In the Aspect of the Textual Function

The textual function is concerned with the creation of text — with the presentation of ideational and interpersonal meanings as information that can be shared by speaker and listener in text unfolding in context. One of the major textual systems is theme, the resource for setting up a local context for a clause by selecting a local point of departure in the flow of information (or perhaps rather “swell of information”, since it is not a uniform flow). Rheme is a narrative description and explanation of the theme, and it is the core of the narrative. Thus, the spatial Location is given thematic status in the example analyzed for transitivity above: [Theme:] in the open glade [Rheme:] the wild rabbits danced with their shadows. (Matthiessen and Halliday, 2009: 54)

Theme here falls into two kinds: marked and unmarked. In the declarative sentences, when the main clause acts as a theme, the Theme is unmarked; and when other ingredients act as a theme, it is marked. In “wh-” questions, the special question word in the sentence acting as the theme is unmarked. In general questions, the subject and the word acting as the operational components together form the unmarked theme. In the imperative sentence, the body usually acts as a theme; If there is "Let"s" in front of the body, then "Let"s" acts as the theme alone. So in the advertising, different advertising languages are chosen to meet their requirements, which is to convey as much information as possible in a short sentence of the advertisements. To reach the most cost-effective approach, producers generally will put the information which is the most possible to attract more customers in the beginning. Here is an example.

Let"s make things better. 让我们做得更好。（Philips，飞利浦电子，荷兰）

In this advertisement, “let’s” is the theme, which tries to tell customers that Philips will be better in the future with their customers. Also, it implies the meaning that if you buy Philips, your future will be much more brilliant. It has realized its role to promote their products and let more people purchase their products.

The role of the textual metafunction is an enabling one. The basic unit of the language in actual use is not a word or a sentence, but the text, which expresses the relatively complete idea. It provides the speaker with strategies for guiding the listener in his or her interpretation of the text. In advertising, producers mainly provide customers with certain circumstances to feel their products. For example:

To me，the past is black and white，but the future is always color. 对我而言，过去平淡无奇;而未来，却是绚烂缤纷。(轩尼诗酒)

剩余内容已隐藏，请支付后下载全文，论文总字数：27094字