The Interpersonal Meaning In English Job Advertisements-from The Perspective Of Systemic Functional Grammar

The present dissertation endeavors to investigate the realization of interpersonal meaning in English job advertisements from the perspective of systemic functional grammar (SFG). For the sake of authenticity, comprehensiveness and typicality of the samples,80 English job ads are collected randomly from the recruiting websites, such as the two major professional recruiting websites, i.e. www.monster.com and www.hotjob.com, as well as the World Top 500 corporations'recruiting websites, and advertising course books. A combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches is applied in this research to analyze the lexico-grammatical resources in terms of mood and modality systems in English job ads through which the interpersonal meaning is realized.The major findings of this research are as follows:Firstly, based on the previous study of the scholars and the exploration of the 80 sample English job ads, the author summarizes the communicative purposes, functional structure, and obligatory and optional elements of the functional structure of English job ads.Secondly, through the analysis of the mood system in different elements of the functional structure of English job ads, it is found that the manipulation of different mood structures enables the interaction between the writer and the readers, and thus realizes the interpersonal meaning. Two of the three main speech functions of English job ads are statement and command, i.e. information-giving and action-demanding. Information-giving can be typically realized by declarative mood structure and non-typically by interrogative and imperative mood structures. Action-demanding can be typically expressed by imperative mood structure and non-typically by declarative and interrogative mood structures due to different choices of hard-selling and soft-selling strategies which can be attributed to the complicated power relationship between the recruiting institution and the potential applicants. Besides, in the special genre of English job ads, the third main speech function of dialogue-initiating is also discovered and it can be performed by interrogative and imperative mood structures, the conditional adverbial clause of "if..." structure, i.e. "if...,+declarative" and "if...,+imperative", as well as elliptical expressions, i.e. elliptical interrogatives and elliptical declaratives, through which a sense of "dialogue" is created to arouse the readers'interest, involve them into the communication and establish an interactive relationship so as to realize the interpersonal meaning of English job ads. Incidentally, an interesting phenomenon of reader-centered YOU attitude is found in such dialogue-initiating structures with the effect of directly involving the addressee in the situation to establish a relationship of intimacy.Lastly, in the modality system, the linguistic realization of each type of modality in the corpus is discovered, and through the analysis of distributions and frequencies of modality in the samples, it is found that probability modalization as a solidarity-maintaining strategy occupies the highest frequency; obligation modulation as an authority-asserting strategy covers the second highest frequency; inclination modulation as a desire-stimulating strategy has the third highest frequency; usuality modalization takes the lowest frequency for the job hunters tend to be more concerned with how likely the copywriter's proposition can be true rather than how often it is true, yet its use offers the readers a clear idea of the job and the company. Moreover, the different number of modal expressions in the samples can be attributed to emotional appeals or rational appeals, and the abundant use of modal expressions serving as emotional appeals can help realize the interpersonal meaning and greatly increase the persuasiveness of English job ads. Besides, modal expressions of probability, inclination and obligation can serve as politeness strategies to protect the readers' positive and negative face and the writer's own positive face so as to establish a harmonious interpersonal relationship and realize the final aim of persuasion.In a word, these findings have implications for pedagogy and further research.