An Analysis Of Interpersonal Meaning In English Household Product Instructions From The Perspective Of Systemic-flunctional Grammar

China’s rapid development makes it successfully enter the WTO. Along with the entering into the WTO, great changes have been witnessed in Import and Export Industry. A great number of products of all aspects are transiting between China and other countries. Because of lack of the opportunities to communicate with customers face-to-face, as the carrier of product information, product instructions are becoming more and more important. Instruction is an exposition describing the features, functions, ingredients, method of use, origins and other information about the product that the manufacturer wants potential customers to know. It is often attached by the product itself in order to promote the product, and increase sales. In order to make an effective business trade, the product instruction employs numerous language skills to attract the potential consumers, among which interpersonal function of language apparently is one of the most critical.The function of language has been classified into three categories by M.A.K, Halliday, which are the ideational function, the interpersonal function, and the textual function. According to Halliday (2000), interpersonal meaning means that language has the function of expressing the speaker’s social status, attitude, motivation, judgment and so on about the things around. Based on the theory of systemic-functional grammar, this thesis aims at exploring the realization of the interpersonal meaning in the texts of household product instructions. The author intends to analyze the interpersonal meaning from the dimensions of person system, mood system, as well as modality system. The texts of sixty household product instructions were randomly collected by author from the products in our daily life as well as the internet. Both qualitative and quantitative methods are applied in the present study so as to make sure of the validityThrough the analysis, it is found that:(1)The employments of different person pronouns can easily engage the readers into the conversations and realize complicated relationships between the writers and readers.(2)In Mood system, the writers prefer to employ declaratives to offer information; to make further communications with interrogatives; to express power with imperatives; to provide information as much as possible with incomplete clauses.(3)In Modality system, different modality expressions reflect different attitudes of the writers and realize the communication with the readers.It is the author’s sincere hope that the present study of interpersonal meaning in household product instructions could be a supplement in this field, and could help writers and readers use this linguistic skill to achieve more effective communications.