An Analysis Of Modality In English Claim Letters From Interpersonal Function Perspective

With the globalization of economy and the development of multinational cooperation, English has been increasingly accepted as a media for international business transaction. As the basis of business information exchange,English Business Letters have won an important status in international trade.However,as business conflicts in international trade are inevitable,English business letters of claim(LOC) are an indispensable part of the conclusion of a transaction or the maintenance of a fine business relationship. On the base of review on some relevant studies, upon collecting 40 pieces of LOC from textbooks and websites as corpus, this article investigates those interpersonal functions and modality realization in English claim letters within the Systemic-Functional Grammar(SFG) framework. It is to reveal the characteristics of interpersonal function expressed by modality in LOC. Also the author wishes that the following findings can make readers have a better understanding of claim letters, thus we can achieve communicative purposes,lodge a claim courteously,and in turn promote the foreign transaction as expected .In SFG, textual function,ideational function and interpersonal function are called metafunctions. The interpersonal function means those personal relations expressed by language. It not only can express the speaker's status, identity, motivation and attitudes, but also his estimates, estimation and deduction towards a thing. Some linguistics represented by Halliday perceive that interpersonal function attaches great importance to the interaction between speaker and reader, which is largely expressed by modality system in grammar. Therefore, as the main semantic carrier of interpersonal function, modality has received so much attention from the logicians, philosophers, and linguistics home and abroad. Its analysis has exceeded logic and traditional grammar levels. Although the communicative relationship in LOC is close to confrontation, the claimant's ultimate goal is to urge compensation and maintain sound relationship rather than blaming, therefore the interpersonal function in LOC is particularly striking which is characterized by heavily using modal expressions. In combination of a quantitative and descriptive method, the result shows as followings: In LOC, modulation is more employed than modalization; the main devices of the modal expressions in LOC are finite modal operators, modal adjuncts, modality metaphors, and expansions of predicator. Modal operators and modal adjuncts are used as the primary ones while expansions of predicator are small in number and mainly express obligation. Among them,"will"occupies the dominant part, a majority of which bearing the"inclination"meaning,"can"takes the most amount in probability. In modal adjuncts, mood adjunct and polarity are the main elements, they intend to state objectivity in utterance and lessen subjectivity. In terms of metaphors, most of them take the forms of subjective explicit and objective explicit way. As for orientation, the objective implicit is more frequent in expressing obligation and inclination. Low and median value are frequent than high ones to show order and suggestion. The interpersonal functions in LOC are as followings: politeness principle, indicating objectivity and obligation, self-protect and encouraging future transaction.