On Graduation in Chinese Tourism Advertisements from the Appraisal Perspective ——taking Pingyao Ancient

【Absrtact】：This paper is a brief study on Graduation in Chinese tourism advertisement from the perspective of Appraisal Study. The force resources in Graduation values rank the first in the Chinese tourism advertisements and it contains the purpose of strong promotion in its own ways to construe the interpersonal meaning. The study on such ways may help the copywriters write better tourism advertisements and improve the quality of tourism advertisements.

【Key words】： Chinese tourism advertisements; Pingyao Ancient City;Graduation

1. Research Background

With the rapid development of economy， tourism has become one of the biggest industries in China. More and more people choose travel to relax them and broaden their horizon. As a consequence， the tourism， in order to attract more people， resorts try their best to make good advertisements to promote themselves. This paper analyzes the tourism advertisements from the perspective of Appraisal Theory， which may shed some new light on the analysis of the tourism advertisements and help the advertisement composer produce more appealing and effective advertisements to the potential tourists.

2. Data and Methodology

In this paper， the tourism advertisement of Pingyao Ancient City of Shanxi province is taken to analyze from the perspective of the Appraisal Theory. The advertisement of it is chosen from a famous Chinese tourism website called Zhongguolvyouwang （http：//www.51yala.com/）.

The qualitative analysis is used in the thesis. It analyzes the advertisement from the lexical and grammatical level. It is analyzed from the Graduation of Appraisal Theory to find the appraisal resources that the Chinese tourism advertisements prefer to use and why they are used like that. The detailed examples are used to explain the resources and its functions.

3. Graduation Resources in Tourism Advertisements

Graduation concerns with the scalability of the locution. It has mainly two kinds of intensity---up-scaling and down-scaling and consists of force and focus. We can see that graduation resources are the richest one in this advertisement. That agrees with the features of tourism advertising. The purpose of tourism advertising is to propagate these sceneries to the putative travelers. The copywriters will do their best to describe them faithfully.

3. 1 Data Analysis from the Perspective of Force

Force refers to the graduation resources that involve degree of intensity and assessments of amount. The expressions that involve qualities， processes and the verbal modalities of likelihood， usuality， inclination and obligation can be modified by the resources of degree of intensity.

The words“稱奇道絕”、“風格迥異”特種郵資明信片” create an ostensive effect which will leave an impression on the readers. Naturally it can align the readers and let them stand in the same stance. They can convey the degree of intensity of infused intensification. Of course， it consists of some words that can turn the volume up. Many resorts are beautiful， so what is the specialty of this place？ In order to make some emphasis on the features， it is useful to adopt some strategies. These words used can effectively arouse the desires of people， so that it can achieve the effect that the copywriter has been expecting to achieve.

“平遙古城，是中國目前保存最為完整的四座古城之一”。In this example， it uses the superlative degree to strengthen the intensity. By choosing the kind of way， it can show clearly the value of the Pingyao Ancient City. In China， there are only four ancient cities that remain very integrated. Therefore， it is worthwhile to make a travelling to those places. When you come here， you can appreciate the ancient buildings and learn the customs that spread in this place. So it is significant. It sees the rapid development of the nation. In this place， you can feel the sharp contrast between the old days and the modern society. In this regard， the strategy of choosing the superlative degree can construe the up-scaling. In this example， it can realize the effect of greatly attracting the potential tourists to this place.

3.2 Data Analysis from the Perspective of Focus

Focus covers those meanings which are elsewhere typically analyzed under the headings of “hedging” and “vague language”. Focus can be seen as the domain of the application of scales of intensity to ungraded categories. Thus under focus， scaling operates in contexts that are not gradable. The scaling containing the lowering and raising of intensity is realized through the semantics of category membership， through a process of narrowing or broadening the terms by which category memberships are determined and through the sharpening or softening of semantic focus.

“僅發行國內明信片資例 60 分一種。每張明信片以大小兩幅圖，畫龍點睛般反映了漢民族明時期城市建筑的杰出范例和特征”。Here the words “僅” “畫龍點睛般”are non-attitudinal phrase， which can be contained in the framework of focus. It can strongly sharpen the attitudinal assessment of the writer. It tells people the postcards are special and exquisite. Based on this kind of feeling， people may want to come to see the real scenery and buy some postcards in Pingyao Ancient City.

4. Conclusions

According to the above analysis of the tourism advertisement of Pingyao Ancient City， the thesis can reach a conclusion. Using lots of graduation resources can sharpen the value of the resorts. What’s more， the force resources in graduation system are used richer than focus to fulfill different objectives. In all， these tourism advertisements use many evaluative resources to construe the interpersonal meaning. They have the effect of aligning the potential travelers or keeping the solidarity.

References

[1] Martin， J.R. amp; P.R.R.White. The Language of Evaluation： Appraisal in English [M]. Beijing： Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press， 2008.

[2] 孔丹冰.中英旅游廣告的人際意義對比研究[MA] .中山大學，2010.

[3] 中國旅游網 http：//www.51yala.com/