4.3　Patterns of global coherence across the stages of the English learning advertisements

As suggested in Section 3.2.2，the hybridity of the generic nature of the English learning advertisements means that we will see various forms of expression in the component stages of the English learning advertisements.In this section，the topical structure of both the verbal and pictorial elements of each stage will be examined and illustrated with examples from the corpus.The identification of the topics and structure in verbal texts are relatively straightforward，whereas that of pictures does not seem so since visual syntax lacks，especially in comparison to verbal language，a set of explicit devices for indicating causality，analogy，or any relationships other than those of space or time（Messaris，1997：xvii）.However，this will not affect the present analysis much because the identification of topics and sub-topics is based on semantic rather than syntactic features.What is needed for pictures is an analysis of their content and also some salient features in form related to the representation of the topics.

Therefore in the following the semiotic patterns，both verbal and pictorial，in each of the main stages of English learning advertisements will be described and analyzed in detail with examples.The focus of the analysis will be on the topical structure in both the verbal and visual parts in the major stages of the English learning advertisements.