The Realization Of Interpersonal Meaning Of Reporting Clauses In English Academic Articles

The reporting clause is not only an important element of the academic article,but also can help writers establish their academic identity and convey their academic views.Researchers mainly focus on types of the reporting clause and verbs and subjects in the reporting cause,but little research on the realization of the interpersonal meaning of the reporting clause.The interpersonal meaning involves an interaction between writers and readers.That is to say,the writer attempts to influence the reader’s behavior and attitude through what he/she has conveyed.Therefore,this thesis tries to explore the realization of the interpersonal meaning of the reporting clause in English academic articles from the perspective of Systemic Functional Grammar(SFG).This thesis aims to solve two questions:(1)What are characteristics in the overall distribution of mood,modality and pronoun system in reporting clauses?(2)How is the interpersonal meaning of reporting clauses in English academic articles realized through mood,modality and personal pronoun system? 20 English academic articles published in Applied Linguistics from 2014-2018 are selected as the corpus.With the help of Ant Conc(3.4.4)and author’s check,767 reporting clauses are obtained by searching the key word“that”.Under the analytical framework of Systemic Functional Grammar(SFG),this thesis tries to explore the realization of interpersonal meanings of reporting clauses in English academic articles from the aspect of mood,modality and personal pronoun system.Through analyzing the collected materials,the present thesis comes to following conclusions.(1)In the mood system,the mood element has a clearly defined semantic function: it carries the burden of the clause as an interactive event.Writers use declarative clauses and past,present tense to achieve the communication between writers and readers.(2)In the modality system,low modal operators account for 63.2%,median modal operators occupy 30.4% and high modal operators take 6.4%.This is because low modal operators can increase the accuracy of the expression and realize the interaction betweenwriters and readers;median modal operators has the function of expressing writers’ personal obligations,attitudes and revealing writers’ academic identity;high modal operators make writers’ tone too arbitrary and awkward.(3)In personal pronoun system,reporting clauses with “human” and “non-human” subjects account for 44.6% and 55.4%respectively.Reporting clauses with “non-human” subjects can make writers’ academic viewpoints more objective and convincing;reporting clauses with “human” subjects help writers show their attitudes,build their academic identity,establish an academic community and short the communication distance between writers and readers.It can be seen that the appropriate use of mood,modality and personal pronoun in reporting clauses can help writers achieve interpersonal meanings:(1)More declarative clauses,past and present tense are used to deliver writers’ academic views effectively;(2)Flexible use of different low and median modal operators realize the interaction between writers and readers and reveal writers’ attitudes;(3)An amount of reporting clauses with the subject of “I” and “we” are applied to construct writers’ academic identity and an academic community.