| One of the purposes of Halliday’s establishing the Systemic Functional Grammar is to provide a theoretical framework for discourse analysis, which has been testified to be applicable to both written discourse and oral discourse. Appreciated by the audience in form of songs, lyrics is a special type of discourse lying between written discourse and oral discourse. It’s a kind of oral discourse written to be sung. The reason why popular songs are so adored by the young is that these songs not only have beautiful melodies, but also can entertain them, comfort them, encourage them, educate them and so on. Since all these functions can only come into work on the condition that the audience are getting involved, song lyrics is rich in interpersonal meaning just like other types of discourse.Up to now, the previous studies on song lyrics can be grouped into two categories: those from non-linguistic perspective and those from linguistic perspective. Researchers who have discussed song lyrics from non-linguistic perspective conduct their discussion from the aspects of philosophy, aesthetics, literature, psychology, sociology and so on. And those who have studied song lyrics from linguistic perspective focus their attention on the phonation, grammar, rhetoric, translation, and application in language teaching of song lyrics. As for precedent studies on the interpersonal meaning in song lyrics, little related works can be found except for a few articles and dissertations collected from the academic website CNKI. Furthermore, the majority of them either haven’t touched upon the topic of popular songs or have carried out their analysis of just one song, which inevitably can not make generalized findings with wide application.Hence the author tries to make a tentative study on the interpersonal meaning in English popular song lyrics (EPSLs). Using both the qualitative and the quantitative research methods, the author will analyze the top ten songs in Billboard2012Year-End Hot100under the framework of interpersonal meaning within Halliday’s Functional Grammar and the attitude system within Martin’s Appraisal Theory. The analysis will be conducted from three aspects:the mood system, the modality system and the attitude system. It’s hoped that this paper may find the particular realizing devices of interpersonal meaning in English popular song lyrics, which not only can testify that the interpersonal meaning theory can be applied to discourse analysis such as song lyrics, but also may give some practical help to the three groups of people involved in songs, i.e. the songwriter, the singer and the audience.According to the statistics, the author makes the following findings:in mood system, the declarative mood occurs with a much higher frequency than that of imperative mood and interrogative mood; first person pronouns and second person pronouns are employed in large amounts; and modal adjuncts expressing usuality, time and intensity are used the most frequently. In modality system, modal operators associated with probability, inclination and obligation occur the most. Among modal verbs expressing probability, those with low value and median value appear the most; among modal verbs expressing inclination, those with median value are the most frequently used ones; and among modal verbs expressing obligation, those with low value are employed the most. In attitude system, language resources indicating the narrator’s affect about or appreciation of something are found to take a large amount. Words related to the narrator’s affect are mainly associated with the un/happiness or in/security variables. And those reflecting the narrator’s appreciation of something either display the quality of it directly or describe the impact it strikes the narrator.Analysis of the interpersonal meaning in song lyrics is an interesting yet challenging job. Further research into the interpersonal meaning in a much larger number of songs needs to be conducted so as to yield a more generalized result. |
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