Discourse Analysis Through Functional Grammar And Its Implications To Translaton Practice

Halliday's aim of constructing systemic functional grammar is to construct a grammar for the purpose of text analysis. Although systemic functional grammar has extensively been applied to the analysis of texts of different types, in the literature to date, there are few studies focusing on a contrastive analysis of various versions of an essay within the Hallidayan framework. This thesis is a systemic functional attempt to study different translated versions of J.Brady's Why I Want a Wife. It is hoped that the present study will provide a keen insight into the translation practice and that the applicability of functional grammar to discourse analysis can be tested.There are five chapters in this thesis.Chapter one functions as an introduction to the thesis, including a survey of discourse analysis, a survey of discourse analysis through Functional Grammar and a brief introduction to Judy Brady's Why I Want a Wife.Chapter two, three, and four are the main body of the thesis.Chapter two discusses discourse analysis through the ideational function. Ideational function is realized through Transitivity system, Voice and Polarity. The focus of this chapter is Transitivity system and Voice. Since Polarity has a close relationship with modality in the interpersonal function, it is discussed in chapter three. The analysis produces three main implications to translation practice. The first is that misinterpretation of lexicons and grammatical relations should be avoided, the second is that adding or deleting should have warrant, and the third is that the change of process type and voice between English and Chinese is unavoidable.Chapter three discusses discourse analysis through the interpersonal function. The interpersonal function can be realized at different levels. This thesis discusses the interpersonal meaning realized at lexical level (mainly modal verbs, modal Adjuncts, and words with emotional color), at group/phrase level (the Subject) and at the clausal level (the mood). Five implications to translation practice can be drawn. First, some modal verbs can be omitted in translation. Second, modal Adjuncts should be properly translated. Third, as for words with emotional color, the emotional color should beVIrecognized correctly and translated properly. Fourth, sometimes pronouns and word order can also express significant interpersonal meaning, and they should be represented properly. Fifth, in order to reflect the same speech function, the same mood of the sentence is usually maintained.Chapter four discusses discourse analysis through the textual function, and the attention is focused on Theme-Rheme structure and cohesion. The translation of simple Theme, multiple Theme and clausal Theme has been discussed and the markedness of Theme has also been mentioned. In cohesion, the cohesive devices are our main concerns. There are three complications from Theme-Rheme structure. First, simple Theme should be maintained so long as it brings no damage to the translation. Second, the multiple Theme can be maintained, but in many cases., the internal order of the multiple Theme is adjusted and maybe, part of it is omitted or becomes part of the Rheme to abide by the Chinese way of expression. Third, sometimes, the order of the clauses should be changed to make good translation; hence the mismatch of the clausal Theme. Cohesion has five complications. First, the demonstrative "the" plays an important part in English cohesion; however, there is no equivalent in Chinese. Second, many of the pronouns can be omitted when they are translated into Chinese, however, they should be maintained if they deliver extra meaning. Third, English uses more substitutions, while in Chinese, ellipsis and repetitions are often used to make the discourse equally cohesive. Fourth, English uses more conjunctions to show the relationship of structures or clauses, while Chinese tends to show the relationship by word order and semantic relation. Fifth, paralleled structures also play an important part in cohesion; therefore they should be m...