In researches from the perspective of semiotics, Verbal or non-verbal signs are very important parts of English advertisements。 Roland Barthes, the author of the book The Semiotic Challenge (1994), believe that communication is realized by encoding and decoding a message。 And he puts forward three kinds of messages in advertising: the linguistic message,the coded iconic message and the non-coded iconic message。 And another linguist Judith Williamson thinks that advertising does not create meaning initially but invites readers to make a transaction and readers are expected to fill the gap between the decoded messages and the messages which readers actually recover with their previous knowledge。Therefore, advertising messages are not fully encoded。

1。2。3。 Researches from Systemic Functional Grammar

    Several scholars have tried to use the theories of the SFG to analyze English Advertisements。 Professor Huang Guowen is one of the most outstanding scholars in this field。 He publishes the book Theory and Practice of Discourse Analysis (2001) which conducts a very specific research about English advertisements with the approach of SFG。 In this book, Professor Huang makes an exhaustive analysis in the functional discourse analysis, the language function of advertising headlines, the narrative in advertising discourse, the code-switching in English advertising discourse and the analysis of public service advertising discourse by SFG。 He also puts forward that many advertisements follow a discourse model -- “problem-solution”。 Nevertheless, Professor Huang does not clearly state whether other forms of English advertising have the same characteristics as public service advertising, and whether there are other ad models except "problem-solving" model。文献综述

Another research in this field is Li Gang &Li Bing’s paper-- Systemic Functional Linguistic Interpretation of Advertising English published in the Journal of Yunnan Finance & Economics University--Indian Ocean Economic and Political Review(2010, 25(5):154-156)。 In this paper, the authors analyze the advertising English from the perspective of the systemic functional linguistics。 They conclude that from the perspective of interpersonal function, the advertisement is intended to persuade the reader or the audience to take action to buy the products; from the perspective of experience function, many verbs are used which can make the advertisement more concise and convincing; from the perspective of textual function , advertising often used concise sentences to catch people's attention and cause people's interest。 However, in their paper, there are no enough cases to support the authors’ conclusion and it is too general, not specific enough。 Apart from this paper, the author has found another paper which is about the thesis--Information Structure of Advertising Language from the Perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics by Ding Jihua published in the Journal of Hubei Correspondence University (2013, 26(3):153-154)。 This thesis talks about the definition of the information structure, the transmission of information and modes of information structure。 But as for other aspects of information, it remains to be analyzed。

In a conclusion, though many linguists studied on English advertisements before, there still exist many problems which need us to do further analysis, especially the functional analysis of English advertising。