Abstract

Advertisement is equipped not only with the persuasion function but also with the social interaction function as a prevailing and efficient kind of medium. This thesis discusses the FAMILY public service advertisement from the perspective of visual grammar of Kress and van Leeuwen and explores representational meaning, interactive meaning and compositional meaning of images with the hope to realize the function of publicity, persuasion in the aspect of communication.
The thesis consists of four chapters. Chapter One briefly introduces the study background, significance. Chapter Two is literature review, mainly offering the information related to the public service advertisement and the theory of visual grammar in social semiotic. In Chapter Three, the FAMILY public service advertisement will be chosen to study its representational meaning, interactive meaning and compositional meaning from visual grammar of social semiotics. Chapter Four makes a conclusion, listing major findings, limitations of the study and further research.

Keywords:  social semiotics  visual grammar  FAMILY public service ad

摘要

广告作为一种流行的、有效的媒介，不仅具备劝说功能，还具备社会交际功能。本文从社会符号学的视角出发，以Halliday 的系统功能语法和Kress & van Leeuwen 的视觉语法为理论基础，探讨“Family公益广告”是如何通过图像的再现意义、互动意义和构图意义来实现社会交际层面的宣传、劝说功能。
论文由四个部分组成。第一章简单介绍论文的背景和意义。第二章文献综述部分主要论述了公益广告、社会符号学以及前人研究。在第三章中，针对FAMILY公益广告，并结合社会符号学视觉语法分析研究其再现意义、互动意义和构图意义。第四章为结论部分，包括研究成果、研究的不足之处及今后研究的建议。

关键词: 社会符号学；视觉语法；FAMILY公益广告

1.1 Background
There is no denying that advertisements play a more and more important role in our daily life nowadays. All kinds of ads are pervasive through newsthesis, magazines, TV or Internet. That is to say, ads are everywhere. Generally speaking, ads can be classified into two categories in accordance to their purposes: commercial ads and public service ads. Plenty of scholars have concentrated on commercial ads from different perspectives, meanwhile, there are not so many researches on public service ads. However, public service ads have become more and more important in modern society, due to various kinds of social problems, such as global warming, water loss, soil erosion, and so on, resulted from the industrialization.