An Analysis Of Interpersonal Meanings In Apology Correspondence In Business English From The Perspe Ctive Of Functional Grammar

According to Halliday and other functional grammarians, interpersonal function means that people communicate with each other through language so as to establish certain relationships or have some influence on others'behavior or embody the social status and closeness between the speaker and the hearer, and at the same time express their views on the world and even change the world. Halliday analyzed the interpersonal function through mood system, modality system and key system, as a matter of fact, there are many other realization devices of interpersonal function. The author not only applies Halliday's theory but also expands the application of his theory mainly analyzing interpersonal function of apology correspondence in business English through person system, mood system and modality system.In recent years, many scholars have studied business correspondence in the perspective of genre, pragmatics, translation, goal-oriented theory and functional grammar. However, under the framework of systemic-functional grammar, the investigations are mainly on sales correspondence, sales promotion correspondence and business correspondence of establishing trade relationships. Apology correspondences in business English haven't drawn due attention. Apology correspondence is a subcategory of business correspondence. Letters of this sort are used to clear up misunderstandings and make apologies so as to maintain their sound business relationship. Moreover, apology only has been studied in the field of pragmatics and sociolinguistics, thus this makes it possible for the author to make a study on how interpersonal meanings are realized in apology correspondences.All the data for the thesis is from library of Beihua University. The author chose 11 books concerned with business correspondence at random among more than 100 business correspondence books. There are all together 56 apology correspondences. All these books are compiled by scholars at home and abroad and published openly. This thesis will focuses on the main body of the correspondence except the address forms at the beginning and the signature at the end.This thesis gives a general introduction of systemic-functional grammar at first and presents Halliday's Context Theory and the three main realization devices of interpersonal meanings:person, mood and modality. Then, based on the theoretical framework, the author makes a close analysis of the 56 authentic apology correspondence in business English. Both qualitative and quantitative study method are exploited; especially frequency analysis method and material analysis are used throughout the thesis to find out their language features of apology correspondences in person system, mood system and modality system. At the same time, the author discusses how the linguistic features are correspondent to the three variables of register. The main purpose of the thesis is to prove that systemic-functional grammar can effectively guide the practice of various types of business correspondence analysis; meanwhile it can supplement the insufficiency of the study on business correspondence and provide a practical function for business correspondence writing and teaching.