A Study Of The Interpersonal Meaning In Job-hunting TV Show

Interpersonal meta-function means that language is used to interact with other people, to express attitudes and opinions, to influence the others’ behavior and to establish and maintain relationship with them. The research of interpersonal meaning becomes an important tool for us to do discourse analysis. The present research aims to probe the interpersonal meaning of job-hunting TV show within the framework of systemic-functional grammar.This thesis is intended to research linguistic patterns of the main participants in this kind of TV program, including the host, interviewers and interviewees, from mood and modality, to summarize the rules lying behind those linguistic characteristics, to discuss the deep reasons and to analyze the interpersonal meaning produced by it. In this dissertation, Only You aired on Tianjin channel randomly chosen by the author is taken as an example to be analyzed by quantitative and qualitative methods.By analyzing these linguistic patterns, the author finds that the main participants in the program have not only common places but also differences in choosing mood, modal types, modal orientation and modal operators with different values. For mood system, declaratives are mostly used, followed by interrogatives and imperatives. For modality system, among the four modal types, probability is most frequently adopted, followed by inclination, obligation, and usuality. As for modal orientation, implicit objectivity and implicit subjectivity are most used, followed by explicit subjectivity and explicit objectivity. Among modal operators with different values, median value is the most populous one. Those participants choose different moods to realize their communicative purposes and adopt varied modal expressions to reinforce their power and status, to ensure the accuracy of those expressions and express their feelings and attitudes.After researching and analyzing the interpersonal meaning, the author proves that the interpersonal meaning of job-hunting TV show can be analyzed by systemic-functional grammar. To some extent, she reveals the language characteristics of different participants and the rules underlying them, provides useful pragmatic suggestions for those participants in job interview, and hopes that they can achieve their communicative goals by more appropriately utilizing language.