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exhibit product or service, and to spread the influence and coverage of which to the extent that the potential purchasing population becomes real and actual. Simply put, advertisers try by the various means at their disposal to get people to buy the product or service advertised. Moreover, advertisers want potential purchasers to consider what is advertised to the exclusion of all other similar products or services. They therefore attempt to construct an advertisement that will fully involve the attention of the potential purchaser and which will have a persuasive effect. Advertisers thus create a semiotic world in order to persuade their audience of essential "rightness" of purchasing the product or service advertised. 1.4 Definitions of Advertising After a brief introduction of the classifications and roles of advertising, we now come to the definitions of advertising. From different perspectives or purposes, the definitions might also vary. In English, the word "advertise" has its origin in "advertere" in Latin, meaning "to inform somebody of something", "to bring into notice" or "to draw attention to something", etc. In Chinese, the equivalent term "guanggao" means "widely announce". The father of modern advertising, Albert Lasker said that advertising was "salesmanship in print". Although the definition was given long before the advent of radio and television, and the nature and scope of advertising at that time were considerably different than they are today, this often-repeated saying indicates that the ultimate objective of advertising is to sell. Obviously it is not a working definition because we cannot use it to cover all advertisements. Today, a widely quoted working definition of advertising was put forward by Courtland L. Bovee and William F. Arens :" Advertising is the nonpersonal communication of information, usually paid for and usually persuasive in nature, about products (goods or services) or ideas by identified sponsors through various media."（Cook，Guy. The Discourse of Advertising. London: Routledge,1992） Another linguist Bolen defines advertising as a "Paid, non-personal communication through various mass media by business firms, nonprofit organizations, and individuals who are in some way identified in the message and who hope to inform or persuade members of a particular audience." (Carter, Ronald and Goddard, Angela, Reah Danuta et al. Working with Texts. London: Routledge,1997) If the definitions of advertising were too vague and abstract to comprehend, a few words of its function would help to clarify this crucial term. Broadly speaking, advertisements have at least one of two functions: informing or persuading, although overlap may often take place in one single piece. The trick here is that an informative advertisement informs "the customer about goods, services, or ideas and then tells how to get them means of an identified sponsor" (Bolen 6). Examples of informative advertisements are not a few, ranging from flyers to insertions in magazine and newspapers, all of that aim to advertise new products/services or special prices on certain products/services. This type of advertisement gives basic, factual information and sometimes shows a photos or an illustration of the product/service to give the target audience a better view about the advertised product. Persuasive advertisements are thus the instruments used by advertisers "who have defined their target audiences and determined the effect they hope