Interpersonal Meaning In English Newspaper Hard News

It is often considered that reality can be observed and recorded without bias in hard news. However, absolute objectivity does not exist in news reporting since observation is usually constrained or determined by cultural preconceptions and traditions. Based on this assumption, the thesis, mainly employing Halliday's theory of the interpersonal function of language, studies how the English newspaper hard news uses certain linguistic resources to construct value and ideology. Through the analysis of 33 pieces of hard news collected from the front page stories of several major American and British newspapers in 2004, it is found that interpersonal meaning in newspaper is usually realized through mood, modality, comment adjunct, appraisal, and so on. The study shows that social beliefs and attitudes are not so easily suppressed in hard news, but they may appear more subtly and indirectly in many ways. In hard news, the dominant mood is declarative, but the choice between the passive and the active gives value to the event. The frequent use of the third person by the journalists, usually from which words of others are quoted, is to make report objective, but meanwhile, subjective.Within the category of modality, modal verbs are rarely seen while mood adjuncts and comment adjuncts are more commonly used in expressing the journalists' attitudes towards what is being described. There are so many words with evaluative coloring which are more closely associated with appraisal that the journalists can not help using them in their writing.The reason why the author applies the theory of functional grammar in this research is due to the fact that there are far fewer works done previously from this perspective. The findings of this thesis are helpful for an accurate understanding of English newspaper languages and at the same time can help readers read and judge a news story critically. Furthermore, the application of Halliday's theory in this thesis shows that functional grammar is quite useful and practical in text analysis.