A Constrastive Study Of Interpersonal Meaning Of English And Chinese MA Theses Acknowledgements

As a universal part in thesis writing acknowledgements furnishes students a uniquerhetorical space to convey their genuine gratitude for assistance provided various peopleand to promote a favorable academic character. It is showing the increasinglysignificance in theses writing. It is believed that acknowledgements section providespostgraduates with a chance to extend thanks beyond the public worlds of academy to theprivate forces. That is, it is safe to say that this part bears the ultimate interpersonalmeaning, one of three meta-functions of language proposed by Halliday. However, littleresearch has focused on this part except Hyland’s genre study on it, let alone a contrastivestudy on it. Thus, the present study will do the research on the contrastive study of theinterpersonal meaning in English and Chinese MA theses acknowledgements.This thesis will focus on the following aspects:(1) The ways of realization by mood,modality, appraisal and person.(2) The similarities and differences of the MA thesesacknowledgements in English and Chinese.(3) The interpretation of the differences andsimilarities.The present thesis adopts Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar and evaluationsystem developed by Martin and other scholars to make a contrastive study of theinterpersonal meaning of MA theses acknowledgements in English and Chinese. The80sample texts are derived from6disciplines correspondingly, all of them from soft science.The study has concentrated on the major four elements of interpersonal realizing devices:mood, modality, person and evaluation. The results reveal similarities and disparitiesbetween samples of the two groups.Research findings reveal that the acknowledgements collected from two groups havesomething in common. In terms of mood structure, an overwhelming majority ofsentences adopt declarative mood both in English and Chinese samples. As to modalitysystem, both English and Chinese acknowledgements discourses adopt less adjunctsfunctioning as readiness, obligation and typicality. Besides, both of the two groups arewilling to use adjuncts of mood including intensity and degree much more than othertypes. What’s more, the median value operators take up the majority of the modal operators both in English and Chinese acknowledgements texts, while the modaloperators of high value is less likely to be employed. In the person system, both of thetwo sample groups utilize the first person pronouns frequently to shorten the distancebetween the addressers and the addressees while the second person pronouns are used theleast dominantly both in English and Chinese samples. In evaluation system, both of thepostgraduates emphasized the positive perspectives to intensify their gratitude viaemploying adjectives, adverbs and nouns.However, the two groups of acknowledgements differ in several aspects. To beginwith, the Chinese texts have employed more exclamatives than in English samples.Secondly, in modality system, the adjuncts of polarity and modality are utilized muchmore often in English samples than in Chinese ones. Chinese postgraduates are morelikely to resort to the low value on the academic abilities they got after being supervisedby their professors. Thirdly, the Chinese postgraduates employ dominantly the thirdperson pronouns while the English postgraduates would like to use the first person morefrequently. At last, the second person “您” in Chinese texts could not be found in thecorresponding English discourse.The result of the study testifies the applicability of mood, modality, person systemand evaluation as analytical exponents for interpersonal meaning’s analysis in academicdiscourse. Meanwhile, it also reflects the influence of the different culture background ofthe two groups in terms of the expression of academic gratitude.In conclusion, the study provides a modal for the latter contrastive study of writtendiscourse in realizing the interpersonal meaning. Meanwhile, it offers a new angle tostudy the acknowledgements discourse. In pedagogy, it may enlighten the composition ofacknowledgements texts. Lastly, it also sheds a light on the culture teaching of foreignlanguage.