Interpersonal Coherence Of Journalistic Discourse

Since the publication of Cohesion in English, coherence has become a focus of attention in the study of discourse analysis. In the past three decades, many linguists have tried to interpret discourse coherence from different perspectives. However, neither an integrate theory of coherence nor an operable framework for analysis has been constructed. As the founder of systemic functional linguistics, Halliday proposes that cohesion is a necessary means to realize coherence and coherence influence by cohesion inside the discourse and, at the same time, by register factors in context of situation.Following Halliday's interpretation of coherence and his division of three meta-functions, we divide discourse coherence into ideational coherence and interpersonal coherence. Although the study on interpersonal meaning has been developed rapidly, interpersonal coherence has not been exerted enough importance. Martin (2008) once points out that interpersonal meaning can be best realized in journalistic discourse, and by way of analyzing journalistic discourses collected from CNN website news, with descriptive method, this paper tends to widen the field of discourse analysis and contribute in the formation of a relative integrate interpersonal framework for journalistic discourse.This paper believes that interpersonal coherence of journalistic discourse includes two aspects: interpersonal cohesion and register consistency, especially tenor consistency and mode consistency. Interpersonal cohesive devices can be detected from not only the perspective of Mood and modality system but also appraisal words that express attitudes of interactants or introduce additional voices into the discourse. Tenor consistency is realized by communicative roles and knowledge presupposition, in which the narrative role of the writer in journalistic discourse is the most salient feature.