| The Joy Luck Club, one of the masterpieces of the Chinese-American novelist Amy Tan, explores the complex relationship between Chinese-minded mothers and American-minded daughters. Furthermore, it explores the realistic problems like the conflicts between two cultures and two values that confront the Chinese-Americans.As one of the three metafunctions, interpersonal meaning constructs and preserves the relationship between the writer and the reader as well as emphasizes the status of the speakers involved in the communication. This thesis analyzes the interpersonal meaning of the dialogues in the novel The Joy Luck Club within the framework of Systemic Functional Grammar. The analysis is expanded around three subsystems of interpersonal meaning: Mood system, Modality system and Appraisal system. Mood system mainly includes Mood Types, Mood Elements and Mood Structures; Modality system involves the Modal Operators, Modal Adjuncts, Values of Modality and Metaphorical Modality while Appraisal system is comprised of the subsystem of Attitude: Affect, Judgment and Appreciation. The major findings are as follows:Firstly, through detailed studies on the interpersonal meaning of the dialogue samples in The Joy Luck Club, it can be concluded that there are enormous examples of interpersonal meaning in the dialogue samples. Secondly, the analysis of rich-sampled interpersonal meanings shows that Systemic Functional Grammar is a powerful operational mechanism and analyzing tool for discourse analysis and it provides people a new perspective of appreciating and evaluating literary works. Thirdly, the different choices of Mood, Modality and Appraisal systems indicate the main theme of the novel: the conflicting and melting. Finally, it can be concluded that various options of attitudinal resources conduce to unfolding the story and altering the protagonists'viewpoints, thus the protagonists'Appraisals echo the ideology of the time and societies they live in. To sum up, it proves to be of great theoretical significance and practical value to explore the interpersonal meaning of literary works.The thesis includes 5 chapters. Chapter 1 as the introductory chapter contains the background, purposes and significance, data collection and methodology of the study as well as the outline of the thesis. Chapter 2 provides a review of the relevant studies on interpersonal meaning and The Joy Luck Club. Chapters 3, which contains the basic conceptual framework of Mood system, Modality system and Appraisal system, serves as the theoretical framework . Chapter 4 is the main body of the thesis. It deals with the study of the dialogue samples through the perspectives of Mood system, Modality system and Appraisal system. Chapter 5 is the conclusion, including the major findings, implications, limitations of the present study and suggestions for further researches.
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