An Analysis Of Interpersonal Meaning In Business English Letters Of Complaints From Perspective Of Systemic-Functional Grammar

With the development of world economy, the international business transaction becomesmore and more frequent. In the process of trade cooperation, business English correspondenceplays an important part in information transmission. For one cause or the other, one party mayfail to abide by the contract and lead to complaints from the other party. They may writecomplaint letters not to lay the blame on their counterpart, but to get better merchandise andservices or appropriate adjustment. When writing such letters, we should pay sufficientattention to our diction. This research will take Halliday’s Systemic-Functional Grammar andMartin’s Appraisal Theory as the theoretical framework to analyze 55complaint letters to findout how to choose and use the proper linguistic devices to reach the aim.According to Halliday, language has three metafunctions and one of these threemetafunctions is called interpersonal function. The interpersonal function is prominent inserving to establish and maintain social relations. Halliday (1994) thinks that interpersonalfunction not only shows the speaker’s attitude, identity, roles and opinions, but also has aneffect on the hearer’s opinion and action. He proposes that mood, modality and person systemcan mainly be used to realize interpersonal function. Martin further developed the theoreticalframework of interpersonal function and he (1997) proposes Appraisal Theory from discoursesemantics. According to him, words expressing attitude, engagement and graduation can be employed to convey interpersonal meaning in human’s communication.The author chooses 55 complaint letters randomly from ten text books which arecompiled and published openly at home and abroad, makes analysis of the corpus by means ofquantitative and qualitative methods and intends to answer the follow question: 1) whatlinguistic resources are used to realize the interpersonal meaning in the business Englishletters of complaints? 2) How these resources are distributed? 3) How the interpersonalmeaning is realized in complaint letters by these linguistic resources? In the process ofanalysis, the author first counts the total number of different linguistic resources and analyzeshow these linguistic devices that fall into such categories as modality, mood, person andevaluative lexis are used to realize the purpose of interpersonal meaning.After analysis, some findings are made as follows: 1) In aspect of modality, the writeremploys more modal verbs with low (27.35%) and median (57.81%) value to express hisdemand and uses fewer modal verbs with high value (just accounting for 14.84%); modaladjuncts are used less usually, but they also can be employed to express certain interpersonalmeaning; besides these, metaphors of modality is another way to contribute to realization ofinterpersonal meaning. They are divided into two groups: subjective metaphors of modalityand objective metaphors of modality. Compared with objective ones, the subjective metaphorsof modality are used more frequently and often employed to express the writer’s own opinionand suggestions with weak force; 2) In mood, the complaint letters use a large number ofdeclaratives (86.80%) to state the problems and propose suggestions for solution; the writeremploys conditionals to express demand indirectly. However, there are fewer imperativesbecause of its strong force. In order not to make the responsible party embarrassed, the writerusually adds please to the beginning of the imperatives to show his politeness; 3) In personsystem, the first person plural form we is used more(39.06%) and divided into two types:inclusive we and exclusive we. The complaint letters use inclusive we to shorten theiremotional distance by putting their common interest together and employ exclusive one toshow authority and put pressure on the other party. But sometimes the writer may use I toexpress his own opinion and intimacy with the responsible party; 4) in evaluation aspect,there are lots of evaluative lexis in complaint letters used to express attitude and opinion ofthe writer’s thus urging the responsible party to take responsibility.The present research is intended to show that the systemic-functional grammar can guidethe practice of business English writing and hopes that this study can provide help forbusiness English letter teaching and learning.