A Functional Study Of Interpersonal Meaning In Yang Lan One On One

In recent years, television talk show programs have come in vogue quietly in China,which have already developed maturely in western countries. As a kind of discourse, thetelevision talk show has its own features which can be reflected in different aspects, suchas society, culture, genre, structure and language, etc. Therefore, in the past decades, thisspecific genre has fascinated a lot of researchers, whose efforts have led to countlessachievements in this field. However, few researchers have put much emphasis ontelevision talk shows from the perspective of systemic-functional grammar. What’s more,the study of interpersonal meaning mostly focuses on fiction, news reports, advertisements,etc, and less on television talk shows.Therefore, this thesis investigates the specific interpersonal meaning of television talkshows, which makes a linguistic study on the television talk show from thelexical-grammatical level that how the interpersonal meaning is realized in the televisiontalk show Yang Lan One on One under the framework of systemic-functional grammar,among which mood and modality system are analyzed in particular, and how Martin’sappraisal theory is used to replenish the whole work. Owing to the differentcommunicative purposes and various program orientations, this paper conducts a casestudy on a mature television talk show program in China: Yang Lan One on One, whichhas a fixed production pattern, premium quality, specific communicative purposes andhigh reputation among the audience both in China and abroad. To achieve maximalreliability in this thesis, quantitative and qualitative analysis are employed.The research results well explain the questions mentioned above in detail. As tomood system, there is a large amount of interrogative clauses in the host language whilethe guests prefer to use declarative clauses to answer questions. In addition, the author alsoidentifies a number of rhetorical strategies in facilitating the process of interactionbetween the host and guests. Aiming to maintain the fluency of the interaction during theprogram, the host would like to employ declaratives to ask questions and the guestssometimes express their opinions by using interrogatives, most of which are usedmetaphorically, aiming to make their speech more impressive and interesting. As to modality system, the host and guests employ various kinds of expressions of modality toexpress diverse interpersonal meanings. They employ a great quantity of median and lowvalue expressions in the program, aiming to make their speech more credible. In addition,they prefer to use the modality expressions of subjective implicit, which makes theirattitude prudent. At last, in the system of appraisal theory, expressions of Attitude play animportant role in aligning the host and guests in relationships of solidarity, among whichAffect is the most explicit way to express emotions which is frequently employed by thehost and guests while Judgment and Appreciation are relatively less direct ways inevaluating people or things.