The Discourse Modality Analysis Of Bi Shumin ’s Red Prescription

Bi Shumin is considered to be one of the best writers with characteristics in the modern literary world. Her works have focused on military, medical and a variety of subjects such as city life. The Red Prescription is her first a full-length novel. It tells a moving story of Jian Fangning,an executive of a Drug Rehabilitation hospital, who helped and saved drug addicts wholeheartedly, got addiction by intrigue, and finally lost her life in the line of duty.Recently, there have been some research about Bi Shumin’s novels. However, the current research are mainly focused on literary field, while the linguistic research just staying at the traditional rhetorical field and no discourse analysis have been studied.The research on discourse modality has gradually become the heat spot in recent years. Modality is a means as the expression of subjective judgment, and as the expression of the speaker’s opinions and attitudes. Functional linguists claim that the use of modal expressions i reveals speaker’s attitude. More than reflects the relations and power status between speakers, modality also embodies the speakers’ living environment, knowledge background, ideology,etc.Based on the systemic functional grammar,generalized rhetoric and narratology, this article applies the modality analysis and the description of characterization in the novel in discussing how discourse modality works in interpersonal relationships of text. This research is helpful to improve the cognition of discourse modality, understand the theme and significance of the story and perception of writing skills.This paper contains four parts:The first part is about a synthesis of literature review of Bi Shumin’s novel and a summary of existing studies of modality both internally and externally, the innovation and research methods.The second part is about "red prescription" modal analysis in grammatical. According to the modal of system theory in halliday’s functional grammar, and the study of Chinese modal system by Chinese scholars, we determine the main modality adverbs and,auxiliary in the analysis of text.Furthermore,I point out that proper nouns, adjectives and interjection is dealing with the speaker’s emotion innovatively, and different words of Chinese class can express different emotional intensity.On this basis, We will identify the characters in the novel.The third part is about modal analysis of "red prescription" in rhetoric discourse.sentence patterns and speech can express the character’s emotional attitude,.This chapter mainly selected the Metaphor rhetoric and Rhetorical question to know the psychological of Characters and the author’s emotion.The fourth part is about "red prescription" modal analysis in discourse. different types of narrative perspective and quotation can express different emotion. Modal analysis based on the narrative and novel rhetoric theory, using the different narrative perspective and quotation to analyze "red prescription", in order to interpret the text’s interpersonal meaning and thematic meaning.Through the discussion of the four parts, we can conclude: "red prescription" novel has a unique aesthetic value and social significance.