A Study On The Interpersonal Meaning In Economic Speech From The Perspective Of Functional Grammar

Systemic functional linguist Halliday proposes that language has three meanings:ideational meaning,textual meaning and interpersonal meaning.Among them,interpersonal meaning means people use language to communicate with others,to establish and to keep interpersonal relationships.It can be realized by a variety of ways,especially by mood system,modality system and personal system.So far,scholars at home and abroad have studied a great deal of researches on the interpersonal meaning.Among these researches,different types of texts are involved,such as slogans,political speeches,literary works and so on.However,there are few studies on economic speeches.Based on the functional grammar of Halliday's system,this paper chooses seven English speeches at Davos' annual conference as a corpus,analyzes and discusses the interpersonal meaning in the economic speeches from three aspects: mood system,modality system and personal system.This study may not only help English learners to deepen their understanding and appreciation of economic speeches,but also help them to communicate with each other effectively and to express their views and attitudes more accurately and appropriately.Taking the interpersonal meaning in the economic speeches as the research object,this paper chooses seven English speeches in the World Economic Forum as the corpus.Through quantitative methods,collecting the data from the aspects of mood,modality and person,and classifying the corpus.Considering Halliday's functional grammar as the theoretical framework,using qualitative methods to analyze and explore the realization of interpersonal meaning in economic speeches.This paper mainly concerns these two questions:(1)What linguistic features do economic speeches have in terms of mood,modality and person?(2)How do these features manage to convey speakers' interpersonal meaning?The research results are as follows: first of all,in mood system,the amount of the whole clauses,the use of different kinds of mood types: declarative mood,interrogative mood,and imperative mood in the speeches may express different perspectives,attitudes,and the statuses of the speakers'.Second,in modality system,the use of modal verb operators,modal adjuncts and metaphorical modality in speeches may deliver the speakers' opinions,attitudes and wishes.Third,in personal system,speakers use different personal pronouns to convey their statuses,and human relationships between the speakers and the listeners.Therefore,studying interpersonal meaning in economic speeches not only help the English learners know the opinions of the speakers',but also deepen their understanding of the speech contents.In short,this research enriches different types of research texts on interpersonal meaning and provides experiences for the future studies.