To me, the past is black and white, but the future is always color. 对我而言，过去平淡无奇;而未来，却是绚烂缤纷。(轩尼诗酒)源:自*751`%论,文'网·www.751com.cn/

     The “past” and “future”, “black and white” and “color” in the advertisement are obvious but strong comparisons. By using these two comparisons, the producers want to convey such information to the customers: if you buy our products, you will also have a colorful future. Everyone loves a beautiful future, so don’t you have the desire to buy one when you read this advertisement?

     From this example we can see that advertising conveys useful information through language. In other words, the language is a necessary part of advertising operations. Advertising language has many features. So many scholars, home and abroad, have done many researches from different aspects, such as culture, politics, aesthetics and so on. This paper writes from the advertising language itself and analyses the advertising language from two perspectives of Systemic Functional Linguistics, namely the metafunctions and the context. 

 2．The Theoretical Foundation of the Study

     Systemic Functional Linguistics was first created by the English linguist M.A.K Halliday. Functional linguists pay their attention to the meaning potential of the speakers, namely what the speakers would like to express, instead of what they can say. The research focus of Systemic Functional Linguistics is the relation between the discourse and the social context. ( Halliday, 1985: 20) The kind of meaning it describes can be seen from two aspects：the language itself and the context.

     Seen from the aspect of language, the system contains three metafunctions: the ideational, the interpersonal, and the textual function. The ideational function is to organize the speaker or writer’s experience of the real or imaginary world. It corresponds closely to the descriptive function, but it is broader because it also includes the expression of the speaker’s attitude, evaluation, feelings and emotions. The interpersonal function is to indicate, establish, or maintain social relationships between people. It expresses the speaker’s role in the speech situation, his personal commitment and assessment of the social relationship between the addressee and himself. The textual function is to organize written or spoken texts in such a manner that they are coherent within themselves and fit the particular situation in which they are used.( Dai Weidong & He Zhaoxiong, 2013: 11 )文献综述

     Seen from the context, it contains field, tenor and mode. The field means what happens, namely the social activities caused by the language. The tenor means the social roles of the participants and the relations among them, namely who talks to whom and what are their feelings. The mode means the function of the language in communications. (Thompson, 2000: 29)

     With the theory above, we will analyze the English advertising from the two aspects concretely.

3．The Analysis of English Advertising Language from the Perspective of Metafunction

3.1 In the Aspect of the Ideational Function

     The ideational function is concerned with “ideation”—grammatical resources for construing our experience of the world around us and inside us. In advertisements, it is important to use the advertising language to create a link between the customers’ experience and the promotion of their products. Only in this way, are customers likely to be attracted, and then buy the products if they have the need.