Special Topic 1 (Linguistics) in UPC’s Youth Master and PhD Forum of School of Foreign Studies was held in Conference Room 346 of the Wenli Building, between 19:00 and 21:00 on September 24, 2020. This lecture, titled A Comparative Study of the Image Propaganda of Chinese and American Law Firms Based on Rhetorical Resources, was given by Zhang Jianke, Associate Professor of the Department of English Language and Literature and Dr. of Tongji University, with Professor Guo Yueqin, Associate Dean of the school, as the host. Professor Sun Chengrong, Dr. Yin Yantong, Associate Professor Zhang Yingli, Dr. Yang Jie, Teacher Sun Yuchao and some English major postgraduates also participated in this lecture.
From the reason of choosing the perspective of rhetorical resources as a starting point, Dr. Zhang Jianke makes a comparative study of the slogans of Chinese and American law firms. He reviews the research status of the images of the nations, the rule of law, the lawyers and law firms, summarizes the development of the business promotion of the lawyer and image publicity at home and abroad, and defines the main point of the image of law firms and its propaganda language. Furthermore, he elaborates the basic framework of rhetorical resources theory based on the analysis method of corpus. According to what mentioned above, he makes a comparative analysis of the publicity slogans of Chinese and American law firms from four dimensions: discourse content, appeal strategy, construction method and aesthetic means, which reveals the influence of the differences between Chinese and English language cultures and the ones between their cultures of rule of law on the rhetorical resources of the slogans of the countries’ law firms. Therefore, he further points out its enlightenment to the law firms in China, which shall help them improve the quality of their international image publicity and enhance their ability of foreign-related legal services.
In the interactive part, Professor Zhang gave careful and patient answers to the questions raised by students in an active atmosphere, thus laying the groundwork for students to make progress on academic and scientific research.
Translators：Gao Chengyv, Fang Qin
Proofreader: Sun Luping
Tutor: Sun Luping
