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 号： 2011211025

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

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