Abstract:As the development of human society, a large number of people have been attracted to the social problems and have participated in all kinds of campaign in various ways. As an effective vehicle to publicize social values and serve for the public benefit, PSAs are usually sponsored by enterprises, governmental institutions, non-profit organizations (NPOs), or individuals to enhance the public’s awareness of social problems and to make the public take action to settle these issues.
Some previous researches about advertisements have been done in the past years. Foreign scholars Richard P. Bagozzi and David J. Moore in “The Journal of Marketing” developed a theory of how PSAs function to induce public response. The Chinese professor Huang Guowen conducted a comprehensive analysis on advertising discourse in functional linguistic perspective in “The Theory and Practice of Discourse Analysis: A Study in Advertising Discourse”. However, there are few researches in the relationship between language and culture of Chinese and English PSAs. Therefore, based on language-culture theory of Eward Sapir, this paper focuses on linguistic and cultural comparison of Chinese and English PSAs through abundant examples. The various cultures and languages have a profound influence on Chinese and English PSAs.
The findings indicate some linguistic and cultural differences existing between Chinese and English PSAs. Bearing the differences in mind, we can have a better understanding of western culture and perfect our own PSAs.
Key words: PSA; language; culture
摘要:随着人类社会日益的发展，许多人开始关注和参与到各类社会问题活动中。作为一种宣传社会价值观与大众服务的有效形式，公益广告对宣传社会问题起着积极作用，也常被企业单位，政府机构，非营利性组织，及个人用于劝说，唤起公众的关注社会问题意识，从而引导公众参与到解决社会问题中。
过去，人们已经对广告进行了许多的研究，外国学者理查德P ·巴戈齐和戴维J ·穆尔在《市场营销杂志》发表了文章“情感与同情引导有利于社会的行为”，建立了公益广告有利于引起社会反响的理论。国内的黄国文教授在《语篇分析理论与实践》一书中对语篇分析进行了全面的研究。他发现语篇对于广告的制作和传播有着重要影响。然而，国内外的研究普遍从单方面的文化或语言进行研究，而本文研究以萨丕尔语言文化理论为基础，对中英文公益广告的语言文化差别进行分析，目的在于找到不同国家之间的公益广告的差别和更好地学习外国文化，这对于完善本国公益广告有着深刻影响。
本文研究发现中英文公益广告语言文化中存在不少差异，这对人们全面认识公益广告有着重要影响。学习理解中英文公益广告的差异，让我们对西方文化有更好地认识和更好的完善我国广告。
关键词：公益广告；语言；文化
