An Evaluation Of The English Version Of The Dialogues In A Dream Of Red Mansions From The PErspective Of Functional Grammar

The theoretical basis for this paper is FunctionalGrammar. The latter half of the 20th century has witnessedFunctional Grammar' s development into a fairly mature ideologicalsystem including that of metafunctions, system, rank and context,etc. This paper aims at applying Functional Grammar to theevaluation of the English version of the dialogue extracted fromthe great classic novel Hong Lou Meng by Yang Xianyi and GladysYang. Relying on Functional Grammar' s theoretical frameworkconcerning the trinity relationship among context, function andlanguage choices, this paper will start from one of the threematefunctions-interpersonal function and exercise the discourseanalysis with the latitude at the level which involves tenor,interpersonal meaning and corresponding interpersonal component ofthe grammar. Interpersonal meaning refers to the interactiverelationship between the speaker and his/her listener in acommunication and the speaker' s attitude on things in the world,while the interpersonal component which is used to express theinterpersonal meaning mainly includes the mood, the modality, andthe evaluation, etc. However, to understand what' s theinterpersonal meaning of a discourse and how to use appropriatelanguage choices to mediate the interactive relationships betweenthe participants in a communication, we must keep the influence ofa certain context in mind. The tenor is just the correspondingcontextual factor which determines the interpersonal function andits language choices. This is just the guideline depended on by theanalysis in the paper. Our analysis shows that Mr. and Mrs. Yang asgreat translators have been able to maintain the originalinterpersonal meaning and represent the original literature flavorvividly in "A Dream of Red Mansions" . However, there is also someloss, of which the paper has analyzed from the perspective ofFunctional Grammar and put forward some suggestions. In the lastchapter, some factors behind the loss of functional meaning havebeen listed out .The chapters of the paper is arranged as follows:2The paper begins with the introduction of the research subject; To pave the way for the coming analysis, chapter 2 displays the theoretical basis; Chapter 3, as the largest part of the paper is contributed to the example evaluation; Lastly, the paper lists out several items of reasons for the loss of interpersonal meaning, rounded up with an conclusion. In a word, this paper is a new attempt in the orientation to evaluate the dialogue of a classic novel from the angle of interpersonal meaning in the hope of kindling some beneficial inspiration for the contrastive linguistics and translation.