An Analysis Of Interpersonal Meta-function On Educational English Speeches From The Perspective Of Systemic-functional Grammar

TED is the abbreviation of Technology,Entertainment,and Design,whose purpose is to change the world with the power of thought.With the development of network information,TED speeches are well known in the world.Anyone who has the opportunity to give a speech at the TED conference has an extraordinary experience.They are either leaders in a certain field,or founders of a new field,and they are all people who have contributed in various fields.Therefore,there are some research values for studying their speeches.Systemic Functional Grammar(SFG)was created by British linguist Halliday in the late 1950 s.He believes that human language has three basic functions in the process of communication: ideational function,interpersonal function and textual function.Based on Halliday’s SFG,this thesis analyzes TED educational English speeches from the perspective of interpersonal function,which tries to solve the following two questions:one is what the distribution frequency and characteristics of mood,modality and person system in educational English speeches are;the other is how to realize interpersonal function by mood,modality and person system in educational English speeches.The main results are as follows:In the mood system,declarative sentences account for the maximum proportion,with a total of 1094 sentences.In speeches,speakers mainly use declarative sentences to state their own experiences and express their views or opinions on education.The second is the interrogatives,with a total of 119 sentences.Speakers use interrogative sentences to arouse the curiosity of the audience,so that the audience can concentrate on listening to the whole speech.The last is the imperatives,with 28 sentences.Because imperative sentences contain the meaning of commands and requests,and the tone is stronger than the first two,speakers use them the least.In the modality system,the author mainly analyzes the corpus from two aspects:modal adjuncts and modal operators.Speakers’ use of modal adjuncts is mainly used to emphasize the speaker’s attitude and evaluation of the content of the speech,which can create a better speech atmosphere.Among modal operators,the proportion of low-value modal operators is about half of the whole,indicating that speakers tend to speak to the audience with a lower posture.The purpose is to narrow the distance with the audience and improve the quality of speech.The number of median-value modal operators is less than that of low-value modal operators,and the number of high-value modal operators is the least.Speakers use median-value modal operators to share their educational views with the audience in a fair manner.The speaker uses high-value modal operators to make the speech more appealing.In the person system,the first person accounts for the maximum proportion,followed by the third person and the second person.Speakers share their personal experience in the first person,intending to gain the trust of the audience more easily and narrow the psychological distance between the speaker and the audience.The use of the second person and the third person is also conducive to forming an interactive speech atmosphere to achieve better interpersonal communication.Generally speaking,in educational English speeches,the use of mood,modality and person system is conducive to the realization of its interpersonal function.This thesis broadens the application scope of interpersonal function to a certain extent,and it provides some suggestions for those who are interested in English speeches.