Download A Study of the Interpersonal Grammatical Metaphor in Advertising

A Study of the Interpersonal Grammatical Metaphor
in Advertising Language and Its Translation
学
院：
天津大学文法学院 2011 级研究生
专
业：
外国语言学与应用语言学
学生姓名：
陈姣姣
学
2011211025
号：
A Study of the Interpersonal Grammatical Metaphor in Advertising
Language and Its Translation
Abstract: Advertisement is an important method used by advertisers to seize the market. In
order to establish image and disseminate information to persuade the audience to stimulate
consumption for a certain product or service, advertisers use vivid advertising language to expand
and deepen the advertising effect. This paper discusses the feature of advertising language from
perspectives of sentence type and then based on Halliday’s theory of interpersonal grammatical
metaphor to analyze the interpersonal GM existing in advertising language and its function to
realize the attention value, memory value and vocative value of advertising language. Furthermore,
the translation of the interpersonal GM is studied to make the Chinese version and English version
of the advertising language have same effect.
Key Words: Interpersonal GM; Metaphor of Modality; Metaphor of Mood; Advertising
Language; translation approaches
1. Introduction
Advertisements usually are used to establish the image of a product or service
and persuade customs to buy a certain product or service by all kinds of contextual
methods. Advertising language is an important component in advertisement and can
be said to be the soul of advertising. Since grammatical metaphor is put forward by
Halliday, it is employed by many scholars to analysis various discourses. As a
common phenomenon in language, Interpersonal Grammatical Metaphor is widely
used in advertising language to reach the goal of guiding consumption. This paper
attempts to study advertising language and aims to analyze the function and
translation of Interpersonal GM in advertising language.
2. The Review of the study of Interpersonal GM
The studies of GM can trace back to Halliday, who formally proclaims the
existence and significance of GM in his An Introduction to Functional Grammar in
1985. According to Halliday, metaphor can be defined as “variation in the expression
of a given meaning (Halliday, 2003: 341). Halliday thinks that any given semantic
structure has equivalent counterpart at the lexiogrammatical level, some is congruent
and the other is transformed or metaphorical, which is called grammatical metaphor.
Halliday not only distinguish grammatical metaphor from lexical metaphor, opening a
new are for the research of metaphor, but also classifies grammatical metaphor into
ideational grammatical metaphor and interpersonal grammatical metaphor according
to the metafunctions of language.
Interpersonal GM is the most important method to perform interpersonal
function. It is concerned with the interaction between speaker and listener. Halliday
points out that the grammar also accommodates metaphors of an interpersonal kind, in
the expression of mood and modality (Halliday, 2000: 354).
Modality is the intermediate degrees between positive and negative, i.e. between
yes and no. Modality expresses the speaker’s judgment or evaluation. It is the
speaker’s attitude towards, or opinion about the truth of a proposition, situation or
event expressed by a clause. Halliday (2000:357) points out: “the basic distinction
that determines how each type of modality will be realized is the ‘ORIENTATION’;
that is, the distinction between subjective and objective modality, and between the
explicit and implicit variants.” Modality expressed explicitly is the modality
metaphorically realized, i.e. metaphorical realizations express modality explicitly
while typical realizations express modality implicitly (Hu Zhuanglin, et al. 1989:123).
In other words, metaphorical realizations express modality explicitly while congruent
realizations express modality implicitly.
Mood expresses the speech function and the underlying pattern organization is
the exchange system —— giving or demanding information or goods and services,
which determine the four basic speech functions of statement, question, offer and
command (Halliday, 2000: 363). Congruent realization is the typical realization of
speech function. In mood system, there are mainly three kinds of mood: declarative,
interrogative and imperative. Statements are most naturally expressed by declarative
clause; questions by interrogative clauses; and commands by imperative clause; offer
can be realized by different moods. However, in real language, there is no such simple
relation between grammatical clauses and the roles they play in structuring a
discourse. Metaphorical devices of the realizations of speech functions make it
possible for us to expand the realization of speech functions in mood types. For
example, we may use declarative clause or imperative clause, the metaphorical
expression to realize question.
After Halliday, there are quite a lot of systemic-functionalists who have taken up
the topic and made contributions to it, such as, Revelli, Martin, Mathiessen and
Thompson. Thompson (2000: 171) claims that mood choices and speech roles do no
always coincide. This mismatch between mood and speech roles is usually discussed
under the label of indirect speech acts in studies of spoken discourse and pragmatics;
but to see it as a kind of grammatical metaphor allows us to explain it in terms of a
more general phenomenon (Thompson, 2000: 174-175).
We can find that when comes to GM, many of scholars paid attention to concern
about ideational grammatical metaphor rather than international grammatical
metaphor. As for the study of interpersonal GM, the focus is the study of the
classification and the ways of judgment of interpersonal GM and few scholars
employed it for discourse analysis and translation. The paper aims to make an analysis
of the interpersonal GM in advertising language and its translation, intending to find
how the advertising language exploits interpersonal GM to achieve their
communicative purposes and make their persuasion more convincing.
3. The Interpersonal GM in Advertising Language and Its function
Functional linguistics views language as a product of social activity. Language
serves various functions when human beings communicate with each other. Based on
the three metafunctions of language in functional grammar, scholars study advertising
language within this framework. Among these three metafunctions of language, they
assume that the interpersonal function plays an important role in providing advertising
information and persuade the audience into a purchasing behavior.
3.1 The Features of Advertising Language
Advertising language is the most important component of Advertisement. It can
be seen as the soul of advertisement. The sentence structures in advertising language,
like the sentences in other styles, are the unity of grammatical, phonological and
lexical structures, as well as relatively complete and independent language unit.
Declarative sentences, especially affirmative sentences, are the most common
expression of advertising language. Advertising language is a kind of language which
introduces or gives information and opinion about goods and services and declarative
mood is the typical way to give information. Therefore, in a common sense, the
advertising language is always positive commendation to a certain product and
service to make consumers easy to accept them. For example (a) Time is what you
make it. It is an advertisement of Swatch wrist watch. This advertising language make
audience know the brand of Swatch is eternal as time.
Interrogative sentences are widely used for the purpose of arousing the
consumers' attention value by imagination. Advertisers supply some questions in the
consumers’ position that let the consumers answer or answered by themselves. Such
arouse the consumers’ interest and promote their actions to buy. For example (b) is an
advertisement of Crown Royal.
(b). Tempted? Enjoy our quality responsibly
The interrogative sentence (b) omits “have you been”. By using interrogative
sentence, the advertiser makes the potential consumer to think about what is so
attracting. It is a successful example to make the audience to image the delicious
flavor of the coffee and lure them to have a taste of the Crown Royal coffee by a
simple interrogative sentence.
Another feature of advertising language is the high frequency of imperative
sentences which makes advertising language different from other styles. In order to
promote the sales of goods or service, advertisers require, persuade, suggest or even
command or order consumers to accept certain ideas and buy their products. For
example:
(c) Make yourself heard (Ericsson)
(d) Take time to indulge (Nestle Coffee)
The verbs used frequently in imperative sentence are: get, let, have, try, choose,
buy, see, look, remember, make sure, etc. These imperative expressions declare the
quality of the product, convey the advertisers’ promise to the quality of the product
and make a call to let the potential consumer to trust this product.
There are also some syntactical deviations in advertising language, such as
ellipsis and disjunctive sentences. Advertisements, limited by the printed space and
expense their language is usually very terse and concise. Advertisers usually omit
some components in the sentence or divide the complete sentence into several parts in
order to catch the consumer's eyes.
3.2 Analysis of the Function of the Interpersonal GM in Advertising
Language
The main function of advertising is to persuade the consumers to buy a certain
product, information or service, so the main task of advertising language is to attract
the readers. When the advertising language is perceived, the message is memorized in
people’s brains. Then audience has awareness which implies the message make an
impression on the audience, who can subsequently identify the advertiser.
Furthermore, the audience makes sense of the message which they have received.
This step decides whether audience takes an active attitude towards an advertisement
or not. If the audience thinks highly of the advertisement, finally, they may take action
and try to buy it. Therefore, the advertisers, in order to meet these psychological
commands of readers, should pay particular attention to the attention value, memory
value and vocative value of advertising language to cause consumer’s attention,
arouse their interest, create their desire and promote their action of purchase.
In a common sense, advertising language which is always positive or
commendatory, seldom use modal verbs or adjuncts. But in order to increase the
truthfulness of language and give some information of advices mildly, advertisers
sometimes use modal verbs or adjuncts metaphorically, such as “I am sure…”, “we
believe…”, “it is likely…”, “it seems that…”. These explicitly subjective type and
explicitly objective form are both grammatical metaphor of modality. Halliday puts
forward that “explicitly speaking subjective and explicitly objective forms of modality
are metaphorical since all of them represent the modality all strictly as being
substantive proposition” (Halliday, 1994:362).
The clauses in explicitly subjective type, which is realized as modal meaning, are
all expressions of a mental process; thus, it emphasizes the subjectivity of the
speaker’s opinion. While in explicitly objective type, the projecting clause,
functioning as the realization of an element in relational process clause, is disguised
as a proposition with certain attribute, thus making the speaker’s judgment or
assertion more objective. By using metaphor of modality, the adverting language is
easier to be accepted by the consumers, so it is easy to make effect of the memory
value of advertising language to keep the potential consumers to have desire to
purchase a certain product or service.
In order to persuade the potential consumers to buy a product, advertisers always
achieve their purpose with the help of metaphorical language, which may in turn
express different speech acts, such as, being polite, interest arousing, cooperative, etc.
Advertising language is a kind of language that gives some information about the new
products and services, so the congruent sentence form is declarative mood. However,
interrogative and imperative sentences are also widely used in advertising language.
The interrogative sentences which usually give the consumers some questions to think
about can arouse consumers’ curiosity to read the advertisements and create the
intention to consume. Imperative sentences are wisely used to give some suggestions
of purchase and guide consumers to buy their products or do some things. Such
derivation is the metaphorical form of mood. For example Kobe Bryant ever
advertised for Adidas:
(e) –Can I beat my sister?
–Can I beat my cousin?
–Can I beat my dad?
–Can I make JV?
–Can I make varsity?
–Play in college?
–First Round?
–All-star game?
–Championship ring? MVP?
–Can I
This advertising language of interrogative sentences gives consumers some
questions to think about and diverts audience’s attention to make them focus on how
Adidas accompany Kobe to grow in his basketball career. In this situation, the
consumers play both the roles of an information seeker and an information supplier,
which is achieved by grammatical question implicitly. This metaphorically
interrogative expression which is used to substitute declarative expression shortens
the distance between advertisers and customers and realize the attention value of
advertising language.
The And in example (b), “tempted?” is a interrogative sentence with ellipsis,
which declares that the Crown Royal coffee easily make feel tempted and the question
is followed by an answer which is an imperative sentence. The speech function of the
interrogative sentence is changed from question to statement. The later imperative
sentence” Enjoy our quality responsibly” declares that the advertiser has confidence
in Crown Royal’s quality. These potential propagandas can easily cause audience’s
attention, arouse their interest and realize the attention value of advertising value and
the call of the imperative sentence hold power to realize the vocative value of
advertising language, calling the consumers to take action.
The illustration of the function of interpersonal GM in advertising language
makes us find that it is important to integrate form with function and that it is
necessary to link semantics and pragmatics. The metaphor of modality and mood are
taken to realize the interpersonal function of giving information and stimulating
consumption.
4. Strategies of translating the Interpersonal GM in Advertising Language
The practical text, purpose and functions of advertisement determine that
advertising translation is different from any other translation work. A classic and
eternal advertisement should be concise, precise, persuasive and informative, so the
translated version of the interpersonal GM in advertisement should also have these
characteristics.
4.1 Retention of the Original Interpersonal GM
The retention of the original interpersonal GM is equal to literal translation,
which means to translate the source text literally into the target text and keep the same
sentence structure and word order of the original. For this translation, the faithful
content ranks first, and goes second the faithful form. The third is the smoothness of
the language. This strategy is frequently used in the translation of advertising
language. The translation keeps the form of the original advertising language intact
provided the original meaning can be preserved. If by retaining the original
interpersonal GM, the translated advertising language can be smooth, concise and
nature in the target language and can arouse potential customers to pay attention to the
product, memorize the product and have desire to buy the product, then the retention
is a good choice. Under this circumstance, the translation aims to reproduce the
original formal elements including grammatical units which consist in keeping the
original word classes, phrases and sentences as well as all formal indicators intact in
TL (Nida, 2004: 165). Absolutely, as a component of grammar, the interpersonal
grammatical metaphor in the source advertising language can be reproduced in the
target advertising language.
4.2 Shift Between the Original Interpersonal GM and Congruent expression
The change of the original interpersonal GM means that that the translated
version contains the main idea and the implied meaning of the original text but not
necessarily its syntactic form in TL. It is flexible, dynamic and functionally equivalent.
If a foreign product wants to enter Chinese market, first, the advertising language of
the product should be translated according to Chinese linguistic habit, making the
target language user draw the same attention and shape the same product image, so
the translator may betray the form of SL for the sake of the intelligible and elegant TL.
The interpersonal GM in the source language may be removed and changed into its
congruent form as a fluent and comfortable version to cater to TL readers’ needs.
4.3 Re-creation of the Original Interpersonal GM
Re-creative translation of the original interpersonal GM means to translate the
thoughts and function behind the words. Peter Newmark thinks that “interpreting the
sense, not the words, is the translator’s last resource; and essential resource, certainly,
and a touch stone of his linguistic sensitivity and creativity, not to mention his
alertness and perspicacity, when words mislead” (Newmark, 2001:76). As for
advertising language, function is its core, so the function of the adverting language is
translator’s last resource. No matter what the original interpersonal GM is, what
important is the persuasive function behind the form and meaning of the advertising
language. When the translated interpersonal GM cannot realize the attention value,
memory value or vocative value by literal translation and removing the interpersonal
GM, translators may turn to the recreation approach to establish the new interpersonal
GM. They should combine the advertisers’ purpose and the demand of the consumers
of the target nation to realize the new interpersonal GM, making the translated version
and original version have same function.
4.4 Borrowing
Translators can borrow the familiar expressions in target language, including
idioms, phrases, proverbs, poems or some other popular slogans used in the target
language, to translate the original advertisement. Therefore, no matter what the
original interpersonal GM is, the translator can take familiar expressions,
metaphorical or congruent, to translate the original advertising language to make the
translation intriguing and familiar to the audience of the target nations. This kind of
translation is more acceptable for the target language, so it is easier to make potential
customers to notice them and guide them to buy the product or service.
5. Conclusion
The interpersonal GM in systematic-functional grammar gives us new
perspective for the understanding and translation of the advertising language. By
using interpersonal GM, including metaphor of modality and mood, it is easy to
realize the attention value, memory value and vocative value of advertising language
and make the potential consumers become the true consumers. In translating
advertising language, translator should take account of how the interpersonal GM
should be translated. Retaining the original interpersonal GM, making a shift between
metaphorical form and congruent form, recreating the interpersonal GM and
borrowing are helpful to the translation of the interpersonal GM in advertising
language.
References
[1] Halliday, M. A. K. An Introduction to Functional Grammar [M]. London: Edward Arnold,
1994.
[2] Halliday, M. A. K. An Introduction to Functional Grammar [M]. Beijing: Foreign Language
Teaching and Research Press & Edward Arnold (Publishers) Limited, 2000.
[3] Newmark, Peter. About Translation[M]. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research
Press, 2006.
[4] Nida, E. A. Toward A Science of Translation [M]. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language
Education Press, 2004.
[5] Thompson, G. Introducing Functional Grammar [M]. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching
and Research Press & Edward Arnold (Publishers) Limited, 2000.
[6]胡壮麟, 朱永生, 张德禄. 系统功能语法概论[M], 长沙: 湖南教育出版社, 1989.