4。2。2。1 Obligation。。。15

           4。2。2。2 Inclination。。16

   4。3 Analysis of Person System in English Commercials。。。。。16

      4。3。1 First Personal Pronoun16

      4。3。2 Second Personal Pronoun18

      4。3。3 Combination of First and Second Personal Pronoun。。。18

      4。3。4 Third Personal Pronoun。。。19

V。 Conclusion。。20

Bibliography21

 On Interpersonal Meanings in English Commercials

I。 Introduction

As we all know, advertising covers every corner of the Earth and it has constituted an indispensable part in both our daily life and commercial operations。 As an important and direct tool of exchanging ideas, advertisements have greatly influenced people’s lives。 Advertising language is special and has its own characteristics。 Many advertisers and language lovers have long studied the characteristics of advertisements。 

In essence, the goal of creating advertisements is to promote the sale of the products or services。 To face the competition and attract as many customers as they can, it is necessary to write successful advertisements。 Good advertisements are expected to have a long-term image and stimulate quicker response from more potential customers at a lower cost。

In order to understand and appreciate how advertisers promote their products, this thesis analyzes the interpersonal meanings in English commercials from the aspects of mood system, modality system and the person system。 How the advertisers build a good relationship with consumers and how they achieve their commercial goals can be easily got from the analysis。

From the study of interpersonal meanings in English commercials, mood system, modality system and person system are often combined to create advertisements。 Meanwhile, learners should also include all the three systems when they study the advertising discourse。论文网

II。 Literature Review 

Both the study of English commercials and the interpersonal meanings are hot topics for scholars in western countries and in China。 

Leech (1966) firstly studied advertising language with the systematic functional grammar。 He thought the advertising English was a register which was a “variety of English distinguished by use in relation to their social context” 。 

Pandya (1977) mainly emulated Halliday’s systematic functional grammar in his study。 He performed the best in using Halliday’s theory to the study of English commercials。 He found that the declarative mood made up the most in English commercials and the imperative mood usually required actions of consumers。

Cook (1992) discussed the social function of advertising in his book The discourse of Advertising。 He realized the big trouble in analyzing advertising discourses。 Advertising discourse had taken a wide variety of forms which made the generalization of such discourse more difficult than other discourses。

Halliday (1994) held that language had three meta-functions: ideal, interpersonal, and textual。 And in 2000, he wrote the book An Introduction to Functional Grammar。 His functional grammar systematically explained the interpersonal meanings。

In China, Halliday’s theory firstly appeared in the 1980s and lots of scholars have used it to analyze all kinds of discourse。 With this theoretical basis in discourse analysis, Huang Guowen (1998) discussed the usual textual patterns in English commercials。 He (2001) studied the textual structure, three meta-functions, coherence of advertisements in detail。

Li Zhanzi (2002) published her book “Interpersonal Meaning in Discourse”。 She studied both the modality system and the person system of language。