A Thesis Presented to the Department of English College of International Studies
Abstract
Many people have expressed their appreciation of the colorful and attractive advertisement that appear in American magazines. They are attractive not only in color and design but also in the language they use that seems so persuasive that readers find themselves unable to resist the temptation. Are there some special linguistic techniques that make these advertisements so appealing and effective? This thesis aims at answering this question that has been puzzling so many people.
In this paper, I will analyze advertising English from syntactic and lexical perspective and discuss how the language is played in advertising English. My analysis and discussion are based on Leech’s work “English in advertising”, which is quite complete and authoritative in this field. But three decades has passed since leech wrote his book and his study confined mainly to commercials. Besides my study is mainly on press advertising, so there must be some differences. I’ve collected some advertisements from some British and American magazines and newspapers published in the year of 1999 as my samples. Both quantitative and non-quantitative methods are used in my analysis, since it’s always the intuition that tells the investigators what are the significant categories to count and contrast. But occasionally, the results of some my frequency analysis will be used to back my statements about advertising English. Later, I will deal with some linguistic variations in advertisements resulting from different products, audience and aims. At last, I will analyze some of China’s English advertisements and make a few recommendations to improve China’s English advertisements.
CONTENTS 47000字
Introduction…………………………………………………………………4
Chapter One
Syntactic Feature of Advertising English…………………………………..…7
1.1 Imperative Sentences………………………………………….……….....7
1.2 Interrogative Sentences………………………………………….………..8
1.3 Disjunctive Language…………………………….………………….……9
1.4 Split Sentences……………………………..……..………………….…10
Chapter Two
Lexical Feature of Advertising English…………..……………….………….12
2.1 Verb…………………………..…………………………………………12
2.2 Adjective………………………………………………………………...13
2.3 Noun and Compound………………………………………………...…16
Chapter Three
Language Play in Advertising English………….………………………....….19
3.1 Orthographic Violation…………………………………………………..19
3.2 Alliteration………………………………………………….……………20
3.3 Figurative Language…………………………….…………………….…21
3.4 Pun………………………………………………………………….......22
3.5 Contradictions……………………………………………………...…...22
3.6 Presupposition and Expectation……………………………………..….23
Chapter Four
Some Comments on Chinese Advertisements in English……………………25
4.1 An Analysis of China’s English Advertisements……………..…………..25
4.2 A few Recommendations to Improve China’s English Advertisements….27
Conclusion…………………………………………………………………30
Bibliography…………………………………………………………….…32
Bibliography
Ogiloy David, 1974，“How to Write Potent Copy”, Good year Co. New York
Ogiloy David, 1963，“Confession of an Advertising Man”, Atheneum Publishers, New York
Don. L. E. Nilsen and Pace Alleen, “Language Play: An Introduction to Linguistics”, Newbury House Publishers, Massachusetts
Leech. G. N, 1996，“English in Advertising”, Longman Publishing House, London
Halliday, 1976， “The Language of Advertising”, Tarter Publisher
R.Rossiter John and Larry Percy, 1989，“Advertising and Promotion Management”, McGraw-Hill Book Company, Singapore
Stevens Paul, 1989 ，“Weasel Word”s, God’d Little Helpers, London
Fearon Robert, 1978 ，“Advertising That Works”, Probus Publishing Co., Chicago
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刘云腾，谢文怡，1987，《广告英语》，上海交通大学出版社。
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章振邦，1994，《新编英语语法》，上海译文出版社。
周晓，周怡，1998，《现代英语广告》，上海外国语出版社。 |
