ABSTRACT: With the development of economic globalization, the trade among countries is becoming more and more frequent. Therefore, advertisement, as a way for enterprises and companies to communicate with customers and persuade them to buy products, plays an increasingly important role. Food and drink are essential in our lives and serve to support human beings. There are so many kinds of food and drink sold in the market. Therefore, it is of great importance and significance to study linguistic features and social significance of advertising English of food and drink.

    The author analyzes some 200 advertisements of food and drink from corpus for the purpose of putting forward proposals for advertisers on how to create excellent advertisements to attract potential foreign customers to buy products. The author describes some linguistic features of advertising English on food and drink from various aspects including lexical features, syntactic features, rhetorical features and some examples are given to illustrate them. Besides, social significance and influences of advertising English on customers are introduced to readers. It turns out that imperative sentences, parallel structures, colloquial language and personification are much favored in advertising English on food and drink. Domestic advertisers (especially for food and drink) can employ the above figures to catch foreigners’ attention to buy their products and then improve the whole nation’s strength.  

Key words: Advertising English; Linguistic features; Social significance

CONTENTS

ABSTRACT

中文摘要

Chapter One INTRODUCTION-3

Chapter Two LITERATURE REVIEW-5

2.1 The Definition of Advertising English-5

2.2 Previous Studies on Advertising English-5

2.2.1 Studies on Advertising Language abroad-5

2.2.2 Studies on Advertising Language at home-6

Chapter Three LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF ADVERTISING ENGLISH ON FOOD AND DRINK-8

3.1 Lexical Features of Advertising English on Food and Drink-8

3.1.2 Adjectivalization-8

3.1.2 Verbs-9

3.1.2.1Frequent use of simple verbs-9

3.1.2.2 Verbalization-10

3.1.3 Neologism-11

3.2 Syntactical Features of Advertising English on Food and Drink-11

3.2.1 Disjunctive Syntax-11

3.2.2 Imperative Sentences-12

3.3 Rhetorical Devices of Advertising English on Food and Drink-13

3.3.1 Repetition-13

3.3.2 Hyperbole-14

3.3.3 Metaphor-15

3.3.4 Personification-16

Chapter Four SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF ADVERTISING ENGLISH ON FOOD AND DRINK-18

4.1 Significance of advertising English on food and drink-18

4.2  Influence of advertising English on food and drink-19

Chapter Five CONCLUSION-21

5.1Major Findings of the Thesis-21

5.2 Limitations of the Study and Suggestions for Further Research-22

REFERENCES-22