Contrastive Research On The Interpersonal Meaning Of New Year Greeting Messages By Chinese And Us Presidents: A Systemic Functional Approach

As a kind of political discourse,the New Year Greeting Message(NYGM)is a summary of the past year’s work by the head of a state and also conveys the internal and foreign policies of the country.In the NYGM,the presidents use a variety of interpersonal means to convey their ideas.While many scholars have studied the NYGM from various perspectives,there are few linguistic analyses on the interpersonal function based on the point of systemic-functional grammar(SFG),and even fewer comprehensive analyses on the NYGM of several generations of presidents.This thesis based on the SFG contrasts the similarities and differences of interpersonal function in the NYGM between China and the United States(US)in the past 20 years,revealing the similarities and differences in the thinking patterns and ideologies of the leaders of the two countries,and providing a way for reducing misunderstandings between China and the US.This thesis likewise identifies four ways to realize the interpersonal meaning in two sets of texts.By comparing the distribution and frequency of the two groups of data,the commonness and difference of the interpersonal function were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively.Firstly,there were significant differences in mood between the two groups,in which the use of the declarative mood was higher than that of the imperative mood and the interrogative mood.China used more imperative mood to highlight its views.The US used a small amount of interrogative mood,which is rarely visible in the political discourse,but the expression effect was outstanding.Secondly,China used more median-valued modal operators,and the high-frequency word “will” expressed the promise and expectation for the future.The US used more high-valued modal operators.Regarding the use of personal pronouns,both groups used numerous first person pronouns,especially “we”,which narrowed down the distance between them and the people.In the US group,the use of the second person pronoun made citizens feel more involved.Finally,respecting the evaluation in the NYGM,the two countries had a high proportion of attitude system,among which there were more judgment and appreciation resources used to summarize and evaluate the past work.China employed classic poems and stories as engagement resources to make the messages more convincing and serious.In the application of graduation resources,both countries used sharpening methods to enhance the effect of expression.As such,from the perspective of the SFG,this thesis analyzes the NYGM of the two countries and shows the similarities and differences of presidents in expressing interpersonal meanings.A contrastive study of interpersonal meanings hidden in Chinese and US NYGMs based on the SFG not only shows the similarities and differences in the language application characteristics by the leaders of the two countries,but also provides the possibility for the mutual understanding and win-win cooperation from a new research perspective for the contrastive analysis of the government discourse.Hopefully,the present study helps to enhance readers’ feelings and understanding of the Chinese and US NYGMs,indirectly providing beneficial and effective references for the cooperation and mutual trust between China and the US in the long run.