A Study On Three Metafunctions In Marine News Texts

Halliday's systemic functional grammar is chosen as theoretical framework,and quantitative and qualitative method are combined to explore Marine News's three metafunctions which are ideational function,interpersonal function,and textual function.First,15 texts are selected from Marine News magazine to build a corpus for obtaining relevant data for the present study.Then,the detailed discussion is made on the realization of the three metafunctions in maritime texts.Next,linguistic features in aspects of three metafunctions are explored and analyzed with the help of both quantitative data and plenty of illustrations.Finally,those linguistic features of Marine News are carefully investigated and compared with previous studies of other researchers.The study result has the following aspects.(1)ideational function:On the level of transitivity,material process,relational process,and verbal process are used more than mental process,behavioral process,and existential process.On the level of voice,active voice is used more than passive voice and middle voice.(2)interpersonal function:On the level of mood,the frequency of declarative mood is higher than that of interrogative mood and imperative mood.On the level of modality,modal operators expressing meanings of certainty,possibility,and determination are more frequently used than those expressing meanings of command,obligation,and permission.In terms of modal adjuncts,those of probability and usuality are more frequently adopted than those of obligation and inclination.(3)textual function:In terms of theme,the unmarked theme is used more than marked theme.In terms of thematic progression,continuity pattern has the highest frequency.(4)In addition,comparing with other studies and corpora,Marine News texts show unique linguistic features in transitivity,voice,and modality.The present study expands the research field of maritime English and has certain implications in English teaching and learning.