Interpersonal Projecting Clause And Its Discursive Behavior

This dissertation attempts to explore projection from the interpersonalperspective,within the theoretical framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics.Theobjective of the study is to justify interpersonal projecting clauses as an effectiveresource to facilitate the language user to augment intersubjectivity.The studyscrutinizes the discursive behavior of interpersonal projecting clauses in the particulargenre of English linguistics book reviews.The research methodology adopted by theproject is a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches.The study therefore primarily focuses on two concepts,namely,interpersonalprojecting clause and intersubjectivity.The former categorizes those clauses whichconstrue interpersonal meaning through projection.The dissertation interpretsideational projection and interpersonal projection as a complementary pair co-optingto construe human experience of the world.The latter concerns the language user'sindirect regulation of participation,joint attention,and social norms appropriate to aparticular situation.A literature survey shows that interpersonal projecting clauses have been mainlyapproached syntactically and semantically.The syntactic approach concentrates on therelationship between the projecting clause and the projected one whereas the semanticapproach on how the projection realizes the speaker's subjective modal assessment ofa given proposition.However,no satisfying attempt has been made to offer asystematic investigation into the phenomenon vis-(?)-vis intersubjectivity.Consideringthe fact,the dissertation identifies and classifies interpersonal projecting clauses basedon observation of authentic data,and establishes a framework for analyzinginterpersonal projecting clauses.It is proposed that the syntactic and semantic featuresspecific to interpersonal projecting clauses justify their status as intersujectivityboosters.The study also suggests that the discursive behavior of interpersonalprojecting clauses is constrained by generic identities of a given type of text. Four categories of interpersonal projecting clauses are identified by the currentstudy.The study identifies and categorizes interpersonal projecting clauses byexamining the visibility of the interactant in the text and whether and how theinteractant is construed by the Projector.To be specific,in I-type interpersonalprojecting clauses,the Projector explicitly construes the interactant through I/you.Inwe-type interpersonal projecting clauses,the Projector is inclusive of the interactantthrough its realizing resources of we/one/reader.In the third type of interpersonalprojecting clauses,namely,no-interactant interpersonal projecting clauses,noProjector appears in the projection construction.In the last type of interpersonalprojecting clauses,namely,non-interactant interpersonal projecting clauses,theProjector construes a third party rather than the interactant.The body of the dissertation examines the lexicogrammatical realizations of eachcategory of interpersonal projecting clauses with respect to the three metafunctions oflanguage.The study also conducts a cross-genre investigation of interpersonalprojecting clauses.By studying the discursive features of interpersonal projectingclauses in the genres of English linguistics book reviews and English linguisticsjournal editorials,the project argues that the discursive behavior of interpersonalprojecting clauses is constrained by the generic identity and social and communicativefunctions of the particular genre.The study also explores how interpersonal projectingclauses function to boost intersubjectivity by specifying their functions ofwriter-reader aligning,position setting and interpersonal coherence,etc.The study concludes that interpersonal projecting clauses are an effectiveinvestment of the language user for the purpose of intersubjectivity enhancement.