A Functional Analysis Of The Interpersonal Meaning In Hills Like White Elephants

This study was a tentative interpretation of the short story Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway through an analysis of its interpersonal meaning from a functional perspective.Language as a negotiating tool is not only crucial in face-to-face interaction but also in the activity of a writer who tries to negotiate with his readers to communicate meanings. At the same time, discourse analysis is also concerned with language in use in social contexts, and in particular with interaction between speakers. According to Halliday's systemic-functional grammar, interpersonal meaning serves to establish and maintain social relations such as the expression of social roles, which include the communication roles created by language itself by means of the interaction between one person and another. The analysis of the interpersonal meaning is undoubtedly a useful tool to make a discourse analysis, including interpreting literary works. It could make readers focus their attention on the social nature and contextual aspects of the literary works. Thus, it could open an alternative way to achieve a better appreciation of literature works.The short story Hills Like White Elephants was picked out from Ernest Hemingway's collection Men Without Women. This study tried to explore the interpersonal meaning in the story on the basis of Halliday's systemic-functional grammar mainly in terms of mood and modality. However, the three metafunctions are closely related to each other; therefore, other means like the choice of process verbs and repetition which are usually correlated with ideational function and textual function can at the same time, more or less, contribute to the realizations of interpersonal meaning. Thus, such means were also included in the analysis of the interpersonal meaning in the present study. The major findings of the study are listed as follows:1. The analysis of the interpersonal meaning realized through mood system shows that the two main characters (the American man and the girl) are lovers, whose relationship is deteriorating; the knotty problem confronting them is whether the girl will take an abortion. The analysis of the role exchange in their dialogue indicates that at first, the two are not on equal footing with each other: the man is in the dominating position; while the girl is dominated.2. The analysis of the modality system helps to reveal their different personalities. The girl, in a sense, has the characteristics of the traditional Hemingway hero, who has courage, honor, and the ability to cope with pain and suffering in the most difficult situations. The man is a representative of the"Lost Generation", who is selfish and egocentric and cannot face up to the change and challenge in reality, and who tries to escape from reality and refuses to take the responsibility which he is supposed to take.3. The analyses of mood system and modality system together also reveal the gradual change in the two characters'attitudes towards each other in the process of the dialogue. The change of the man's attitude towards the girl is more obvious: from domineering indifference to passive cooperation and then to hypocritical and irresponsible reassurances when it comes to the topic of the abortion. And by contrast, the girl starts up, asking for the man's sympathy repeatedly and then feeling disappointed. Finally, she is determined to be independent, doing things as she likes. Such changes represented through the analysis of the interpersonal meaning confirm the role of the interpersonal meaning in characterization in literary works.4. The analyses of the interpersonal meaning realized through means which are usually related to textual meaning and ideational meaning further testifies to the imbalance of the relationship between the man and the girl: dominating and dominated. And above all, such analyses prove that interpersonal function is not isolated but closely related with the other metafunctions, namely ideational and textual. The three are interdependent strands and can overlap in most cases. Accordingly, there is no way to draw an absolutely clear boundary line between them, especially in literary works. Moreover, the results of the present study, to a certain extent, confirm the feasibility of Halliday's functional approach in the analysis of literary works.The pedagogical implications lie in two aspects: The functional analysis of the grammatical patterns in Hills Like White Elephants might offer an alternative choice for the teaching and learning literary works and enable people to better appreciate literary works from different dimension. Such analysis might also facilitate the teaching and learning of the language itself. Discourse analysis from functional perspective might lead to a better understanding of the target language from discourse level and therefore speed up the learners'acquisition and learning of the target language.