ABSTRACT

Advertisement is one of the important tools of marketing in the term of persuading the potential consumers to buy the products or services. Actually, stylistic analysis of advertisement, especially stylistic analysis of commercial advertisement from a contractive angle, is in scarcity. Therefore, this thesis aims to further broadens scope of stylistic analysis. On the basis of former researches, this paper conducts a contrastive study on stylistic features of real estate advertisements in China and USA. 

Based on the theory of stylistics, this study analyses the Chinese and foreign advertisements from three levels: the graphological level, the lexical level and the semantic level. It is concluded that (1) in the graphological level, the English advertisements prefer less punctuation, the pictures emphasizing the feelings of residents and shorter paragraphing; (2) in the lexical level, although Chinese and English advertisements make full use of numbers and good evaluative adjectives related to the performing quality of property, the Chinese advertisements use more complex adjectives; (3) in the semantic level, besides the high frequency of parallelism, the English advertisements use more adverbial connectors.

Key words: stylistic features; advertisements in Chinese and English media; comparative study

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABSTRACT

摘要

Chapter One INTRODUCTION-1

1.1 Background of the Research-1

1.2 Significance of the Study-1

1.3 Structure of the Study-2

Chapter Two LITERATURE REVIEW-3

2.1 Stylistics-3

2.1.1 Definitions of Stylistics-3

2.1.2 Stylistic Features of Different Genres-4

2.2 Advertisements-5

2.2.1 Rhetoric Approach to Advertisements-5

2.2.2 Pragmatics Approach to Advertisements-6

Chapter Three METHODOLOGY-8

3.1 Research Questions-8

3.2 Data Collection-8

3.2.1 Data Source-8

3.2.2 Principles of Data Selection-9

3.3 Methods of Analysis-9

3.4 Research Procedures-10

3.3.1 Four Steps-10

3.3.2 Four Levels-10

Chapter Four RESULTS AND DISCUSSION-11

4.1 The Graphological Features of Real Estate Advertisements-11

4.1.1 Punctuation-11

4.1.2 Pictures-14

4.1.3 Paragraphing-15

4.2 The Lexical Features of Real Estate Advertisements-16

4.2.1 Word Frequency-16

4.2.2 Employment of Numbers-19

4.3 The Semantic Features of Real Estate Advertisements-19

4.3.1 Cohesive Devices-19

4.3.2 Rhetoric Devices-20

Chapter Five CONCLUSION-23

5.1 Major Research Findings-23

5.2 Implications of the Study-24

5.3 Limitations of the Study and Suggestions for Future Research-25

REFERENCES-26