An Analysis Of Interpersonal Meaning In Economic Reviews

Along with people’s increasing participation in economic activities, economic newsreports and economic reviews have gradually become the object that people pay close attentionto. As the sub-genre of news review discourses, economic reviews hold their own unique stylesand characteristics. Generally speaking, economic review writers not only provide aprofessional and objective interpretation of latest economic phenomena but also take some kindof responsibility to analyze the impact of those economic phenomena and predict their futuredevelopment trends. As the medium of communication between the writers and their readers,economic reviews play an important and irreplaceable role in this process. On one hand,writers of economic reviews hope that what they write could bring certain influence to theirreaders and after reading their economic reviews, readers can greatly accept their points ofview of economic events with the help of the writers’ analysis and explanation and finally thecommunication between the writers and the readers can successfully realized. On the otherhand, the readers would be greatly excited if they find that those economic reviews contain theeconomic problems which they care about and provide them with detailed elaboration andanalysis of the problems, which would help a lot when they make proper judgment in someeconomic activities. So it can be said that many interpersonal resources are embedded ineconomic reviews.The previous studies of economic reviews mainly concentrated on their stylisticcharacteristics and writing techniques and the studies of their interpersonal meaning from theperspective of functional grammar are rarely found. After a detailed analysis of the previousstudies, this thesis attempts to explore the realization of interpersonal meanings in economicreviews from the perspectives of mood system, modality system and appraisal theory based onthe combined framework of Halliday’s model of interpersonal meaning and Martin’s appraisaltheory. In the present study, forty economic reviews dated from January1st,2011to September30th,2011are selected as the research objects from the websites of Financial Times（http://www.ftchinese.com/） and all of these selected economic reviews are written byMartin Wolf who is a famous economist and journalist. Combining both qualitative and quantitative analytical methods, the author analyzes the functions of mood system, modalitysystem and appraisal system in realizing interpersonal meanings of thirteen economic reviewswhich focus on the eurozone problems after a classification of those forty samples.Through certain detailed analysis the thesis discloses in the end that declarative moodtakes up a predominant proportion in economic reviews. Present tense and third personpronouns are widely adopted by the writer of economic reviews to show objectivity of analysisand promptness, timelessness and immediacy of information. Compared with the past andpresent tense, the writers of economic reviews rarely use the future tense to express their viewsand opinions directly although they may provide some prediction of the development trend orfurther influence of certain economic issues, which leaves some space for the readers to thinkby themselves. Among various modal expressions, the writer tends to use median values modaloperators to express probability, by means of which a good communication relationship withthe readers is established. By using different kinds of appraisal resources, the writer subtlytransfers his personal attitudes to an institutional one so as to make it easier for the readers toaccept his opinions. Besides, allowing the existence of other opinions and skillfully citingvaluable opinions of qualified people or institutions enhance the authority and reliability of thewriter’s opinion with the aim of persuading the readers and what’s more by making use ofgraduation resources, the writer could narrow down the psychological distances with thereaders to some extent and realize the successful communication between them.It is believed that this tentative analysis of linguistic realization of interpersonal meaningfrom the perspective of Halliday’s interpersonal functions and Martin’s appraisal theory isfeasible and helpful. And it is the author’s sincere hope that the present studywill deepen the readers’ understanding of economic reviews and be some help foreconomic writing and the research of economic reviews.