Abstract: Tourism advertising contributes to the development of tourism industry, so it is valuable to study its language features. The thesis explores the interpersonal meaning in 20 English tourism advertisements within the framework of systemic functional linguistics. By adopting quantitative and qualitative approaches to analyze the mood, modality, person and attitude system, the paper attempts to reveal the specific linguistic devices used in these advertisements and explain how interpersonal meaning is realized. It has found that declaratives are normally used to supply information; interrogatives and imperatives can be metaphorically used to interact with readers; advertisers prefer to employ low value modal expressions to avoid the absoluteness of the statement; the first and second person pronouns are frequently used to create a conversational atmosphere and shorten the distance from readers; there are abundant positive attitude resources which help highlight the merits of attractions and arouse readers’ interest.

Key words: interpersonal meaning; systemic functional linguistics; English tourism advertisements

CONTENTS

Abstract

摘要

1. Introduction.1

2. Literature Review and Theoretical Framework.1

2.1 Tourism Advertisements

2.2 Interpersonal Meaning in Systemic Functional Linguistics

2.2.1 Halliday’s Model

    2.2.2 Martin’s Model

3. Research Methodology5

3.1 Research Question

3.2 Research Design

3.3 Data Collection

4. Analysis of Interpersonal Meaning in Tourism Advertisements6

4.1 Mood System

4.2 Modality System

4.3 Person System

4.4 Attitude System

5. Conclusions.12

Bibliography14

Appendix15

Acknowledgements. .20