Interpersonal Grammatical Metaphor and Its Functions in English Cosmetic Advertisement

Abstract

English cosmetic advertisement plays quite an important role in today’s world in which the economic globalization is developing rapidly. A lot of studies about the English cosmetic advertisement have been done from many aspects such as semiotics and pragmatics, while the studies from the interpersonal grammatical metaphor which was proposed by Halliday in 1985 are not much. The author of this paper collected lots of English cosmetic advertisements through referring to the magazine Vogue and the official websites of some famous cosmetics brands. Through analyzing English cosmetic advertisements collected, this paper aims to discuss how the interpersonal grammatical metaphor is applied and what kind of functions it has in the English cosmetic advertisement, and to help people understand the English cosmetic advertisement better.

This paper consists of three parts. The first part is the theoretical foundation of this paper, which introduces the concept of interpersonal grammatical metaphor. The second part discusses the linguistic features of the English cosmetic advertisement and the application of interpersonal grammatical metaphor in the English cosmetic advertisement. The last part is about the summary of the functions of interpersonal grammatical metaphor in this kind of advertisement through analyzing the advertisements collected. Through the analysis, it can be concluded that interpersonal grammatical metaphor is widely used in the English cosmetic advertisement and the proper usage of it has lots of benefits. 

Key words: English Cosmetic Advertisement; Interpersonal Grammatical Metaphor; Applications; Functions