Abstract:As the global economy is developing at a staggering rate, advertisement, as a way of promoting products and a special type of writing is playing a more and more significant role in our life. Based on Searle's speech act theory, there have been a lot of scholars of both inland and outland studying English advertisement. This thesis aims to analyze authentic texts of English advertisement on the basis of the five categories of Searle’s illocutionary acts: assertives, directives, commissives, expressives and declarations, thereby leading the consumers to understand the meaning of advertisement from the aspect of illocutionary act. The main part of the paper is a specific analysis of authentic examples to reveal how English advertisement texts function as illocutionary acts. Thus the audiences may understand how advertising texts aim at persuading customers to take action or buy products with different types of illocutionary acts. From this perspective we can see that advertisement texts is also a kind of speech act and thus an important subject in language study. Meanwhile, the paper also reveals that food advertisement tends to perform speech acts of assertives and directives.

Key words: speech act; illocutionary acts; advertisement

摘 要:随着经济全球化的发展，广告作为商品宣传媒介和一种特殊的文体已经在人们的生活中起着越来越重要的作用。国内外已有很多学者依据赛尔的言语行为理论对英语广告进行研究。本文以Searle对言外行为的分类为理论基础，对日常生活中存在的大量广告文本的言语效力进行分析,引导消费者从言外行为的角度更准确地理解及欣赏广告。本文的主体部分是对真实的广告实例文本来分析广告文本是如何实施言外行为的。并通过分析揭示广告是如何通过：阐述，指令，承诺，表达，和宣告等不同的言外行为来达到促使消费者购买产品或者采取某种行动的交际目的。从这个角度可以看出，广告文本也是一种言语行为，是语用学研究中的一项重要课题。同时，本文也试图揭示，食品广告的言外行为倾向于阐述类和指令类。

关键词：言外行为；言语行为；广告文本