ABSTRACT

With the improvement of living standards, people have begun to strengthen the pursuit of beauty and the cosmetics industry booms. From the perspective of critical discourse analysis, this article discusses about the linguistic devices used in cosmetic advertisements in some English magazines to persuade consumers to purchase products. The main theoretical framework of this study is a combination of Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar and Ruth Wodak’s Discourse-historical approach. The research results show that English cosmetic advertising takes advantage of the consumers’, especially women’s desire for beauty, and uses various discursive devices with the background of historical and cultural knowledge. It shows the effect which can be achieved after using the product to persuade consumers to buy the products. Consumers must be rational while watching advertisements, make the right judgments and buy products they really need.

Key words: CDA; English cosmetic advertisements; language

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABSTRACT

摘要

Chapter One INTRODUCTION-1

Chapter Two LITERATURE REVIEW-3

2.1 An overview of Critical Discourse Analysis-3

2.2 An overview of Advertisements-4

2.2.1 The Origin of Advertisements-4

2.2.2 Functions and Characteristics of Advertisements-5

2.2.3 Previous studies on English Cosmetic Advertisements at Home and Abroad-5

2.3 Summary-6

Chapter Three RESEARCH METHODOLOGY-7

3.1 Research Questions-7

3.2 Research Corpus-7

3.3 Theoretical Framework-8

Chapter Four RESULTS AND DISCUSSION-10

4.1 Discourse Analysis at Micro level-10

4.1.1 Modal Verb-10

4.1.2 Thematic Structure-10

4.1.3 Transitivity-11

4.2 Discourse Analysis at Macro level-13

4.2.1 Historical Background-13

4.2.2 Cultural Background-14

4.3 Summary-15

Chapter Five CONCLUSIONS-17

RERERENCES-19