Study On Interpersonal Meaning Of MECST(Medical English For Common Science And Technology) Discourse

Interpersonal meaning, one component of the three meanings (ideational meaning, interpersonal meaning and textual meaning) in systematic functional grammar, was first elaborated by Halliday in the 1960s. It refers to how we employ language to interact with other people, to establish and maintain relationships with them, to influence their behaviors, to express our own views on things in the world, and to elicit or change others' opinions. In Halliday's view, interpersonal meaning is mainly realized by mood, modality. However, in other linguists' view, the linguistic devices realizing interpersonal meaning are not limited to the scope defined by Halliday, and the means are diverse. LiZhanzi points out that in autobiographic discourse tense, directive speech and personal pronouns are all means to realize interpersonal meaning. In this thesis, the author mainly discusses interpersonal meaning of MECST (Medical English for Common Science and Technology) from four perspectives, that is, person, mood, modality and appraisal system. It is hoped that the present study can contribute to the writing, translation and teaching of MECST.EST (English for Science and Technology) is divided into two categories:ECST (English for Common Science and Technology) and ESST (English for Specialized Science and Technology). The former is widely used in nearly all areas, written for ordinary readers, while the latter is quite specialized, written for experts in specific field. In this thesis, the author will only discuss MECST-a branch of ECST. For many years, studies on the EST are mainly on lexis, grammar, style, cognition and some applications of ECST, such as ECST teaching, translation and writing. Studies in the perspective of functional grammar are mainly focused on ideational meaning and textual meaning; researches on interpersonal meaning are very few. The research is based on 15 medical English discourses chosen from the Internet and medical corpus in the methodology of quantitative and qualitative analysis. It is found that MECST discourse also reveals certain interpersonal relations apart from conveying information because there are two participants in the discourse:the professional author conveying information and the unprofessional readers receiving information. The two participants are unequal in status. The author, however, must balance his authority of professional knowledge with readers' questioning, making the interpersonal meaning in MECST complex.This thesis studies MECST discourse from a new perspective:interpersonal meaning, and it is hoped that it can be a valuable supplement to the study of MECST discourse and can provide referential information and supplementary explanation for a better understanding and satisfactory teaching, writing and translation of MECST discourse.