The Realization Of Interpersonal Meaning By Modality In Question-Answer Section Of "21～(st) Century Cup" National English Speaking Competition

One of important components in Halliday's Functional Grammar is metafunction. Halliday classified it into three kinds, that is, textual function, interpersonal function and ideational function. Textual function of language refers to the fact that we organize our messages in ways which indicate how they fit in with the other messages around them and with the wider context. We use language to interact with other people, to establish and maintain relations with them, to influence their behavior, to express our own viewpoint on things in the world, and to elicit or change others'opinions—this is what we call interpersonal function of language. We use language to talk about our experience of the world, including the worlds in our own minds, to describe events and states the entities involved in them—this is what we call ideational function of language. Systemic-functional linguists, represented by Halliday argue that modality is a subsystem of the mood system, realizing the interpersonal meanings of language. The term Modality is used to refer to how speakers signal probability, usuality, obligation and inclination. It is not only associated with modal verb operators, but also with interpersonal metaphor, modal adjuncts, modal adjectives and modal nominal equivalents. It is unfortunate that systemic-functional linguists'treatment on modality is confined to the level of clause. But in certain discourse, how is modality realized and how does it function? This paper, based on the theoretical framework of Halliday's systemic-functional grammar, ventures to investigate the linguistic representations, frequency and function of modality in Question-Answer section of"21st Century Cup"National English Speaking Competitions from 2001 to 2005. It also attempts to provide some explanations as to why the modality appears the way as it is.The study finds that there is a high frequency of appearance of modal expressions in the Question-Answer section of"21st Century Cup"National English Speaking Competitions, among which the frequency of appearance of modal verb operators is obviously higher than other modal forms, accounting 44.3% of the total modal expressions; the speakers adopt a lot of metaphors of modality, especially the explicitly subjective metaphors like"I think","I believe","I admit"etc, and more low or median-value modality are used in the discourse. In addition to these findings, the study also finds that the modal expressions can help to realize different interpersonal functions in English speaking competitions, which include fulfilling its generic demand of being objective, obeying the principle of politeness and being a way of interaction between the speakers and listeners.The present study can be a complement to the previous research. It may help enrich the application of systemic functional linguistics in Chinese discourse studies especially its application to studying interpersonal meaning of language. What's more, it can offer insights into the teaching of practical English speaking and improvement of language learners'communicative ability.