| The topic of interpersonal meanings has attracted many linguists to make research from the perspective of modality system. However, few of them have studied the differences and similarities of interpersonal meanings conveyed by modality system between English and Chinese. In order to fill up the gap, this paper attempts to make a contrastive study of interpersonal meanings realized by modality system between English political news and Chinese political news.Since this paper analyses English and Chinese materials from three realizations of modality system, including modal auxiliary, modal adjunct and modality metaphor, this paper focuses on the following research questions:1) What are the general characteristics of modal auxiliaries used in EPN and CPN and the differences of interpersonal meanings conveyed by modal auxiliaries between EPN and CPN?2) What are the general characteristics of modal adjuncts used in EPN and CPN and the differences of interpersonal meanings conveyed by modal adjuncts between EPN and CPN?3) What are the general characteristics of modality metaphors used in EPN and CPN and the differences of interpersonal meanings conveyed by modality metaphors between EPN and CPN?To answer the questions and to make the results convincing, all the linguistic materials selected are from two influential websites in America and mainland China-CNN news (http://www.cnn.com) and China daily (www.chinadaily.com.cn), the former as EPN and the latter as CPN. The linguistic materials are collected within the catalog of political news spanning from March 1st to June 30th of 2014. In accordance to Halliday’s (1994) definition and classification of modality items in English and Ma Qingzhu (1992) and Peng Xuanwei’s (2000) in Chinese, three linguistic realizations of modality system are recognized in EPN and CPN. With the help of antconc 3.2.4 as well as manual scrutiny of the context, all modality items are identified so that the frequency and distribution of them can be figured out. Based on statistic figures, quantitative and qualitative description can be carried out to see how interpersonal meanings are transferred by these modality items. The quantitative research mainly involves comparing three categorizations (including modal auxiliary, modal adjunct and modality metaphor). The qualitative research explores the differences and similarities of how interpersonal meanings are conveyed by modality system. Detailed analysis of both quantitative and qualitative research yields the following findings:Firstly, in terms of modal auxiliary, including modal of probability, modal of obligation and modal of inclination, its general characteristic and the interpersonal meanings it conveyed in EPN and CPN are almost the same. Among the three subcategories, modal of probability is widely used in EPN and CPN because it can mitigate reporters’personal tendency and convey information in a less definite tone. Modals of obligation occupy approximately the same amount of proportion in EPN and CPN. That’s because in political news, reporters have to state facts in a forceful and non-negotiable way to establish authority and build indubitable dignity. This also helps explain why modals of inclination occupy the least frequency in EPN and CPN.Secondly, as to modal adjunct, it includes mood adjunct and comment adjunct. Moreover, mood adjunct can be categorized into adjunct of polarity and modality, adjunct of temporality and adjunct of mood. Within mood adjunct, its general characteristic and the interpersonal meanings it conveyed in EPN and CPN are almost the same. Adjunct of polarity and modality is the predominant type, with adjunct of temporality being the second and adjunct of mood the last. Adjuncts of polarity and modality are used to make direct statement which help readers see through reporters’real intention. Adjuncts of temporality serve to reveal reporters’unspoken feelings towards a certain statement. Adjuncts of mood are adjuncts with hints of subjectiveness and arbitrariness. As to comment adjunct, its general characteristic and the interpersonal meanings it conveyed are different. It is more variable in CPN than that in EPN. However, Chinese reporters prefer to use more comment adjuncts than English reporters not because they are allowed to unveil their personal opinions in political news but because Chinese language is much more vivid than English during a long time language development, which makes reporters more flexible in selecting comment adjuncts in political news.Thirdly, modality metaphor consists of objective explicit and subjective explicit. There exist some differences in the usage of modality metaphor and the interpersonal meanings it conveyed in EPN and CPN. The total number of modality metaphor is almost the same in EPN and CPN. However, in EPN, the occurrence of objective explicit is much smaller than the counterpart in CPN and subjective explicit in EPN is twice as much as that in CPN. That’s because individualism in the west makes reporters confident in expressing their opinions in a direct way. However, in China, people tend to avoid tension between one and another so they express opinions in a modest way.In light of these findings, this paper makes some pedagogical implications both for students and teachers. For students, they should grasp a better understanding of modality system and sharpen their awareness while reading political news or other kinds of news. For teachers, they should define and paraphrase the whole modality system in detail so that students can locate any words or lexical expressions that are used as modality item. Also, teachers should encourage students to use modality system in their own writing. With unremitting efforts and successive practice, students can gradually become proficient in dealing with them. |
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