A Contrastive Discourse Analysis Of Interpersonal Function In Chinese And English Necessities Expositions

The concept of interpersonal function first appears in Halliday's three metafunctions. During the past few decades, more importance has been attached to the studies on textual function while less was to the ideational function and interpersonal function. This thesis is an attempt to make a contrastive analysis of the interpersonal function of or beyond the level of clause. After making a detailed contrastive analysis of the interpersonal function in Chinese and English necessities expositions, the author of this thesis comes to the conclusion that the Chinese expositions stress the conveying of information while the English expositions pay close attention to both informing and persuading. It is hoped that the present study will produce a keen insight into the translation practice of the necessities expositions from Chinese to English.There are four chapters in this thesis.Chapter one functions as a literature review of the studies on the contrastive discourse analysis and interpersonal function analysis. The implication of this part is that the resources to realize interpersonal function can be in the three metafunctions and that the level of interpersonal function analysis can be of or beyond clause. Furthermore, this part also deals with the collection and classification of the data in this thesis. Chapter two discusses the theoretical foundation and analysis levels based on Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar. The author first gives an elaboration on the two principal approaches to realize interpersonal functions: mood and modality, then discusses the interpersonal meaning realized at lexical level (mainly modal verbs, modal adjuncts and words with emotional color), at group level (the subject), at the clausal level (the mood) and at the discourse level (with context, tense and communication role). Chapter three makes a contrastive analysis of the interpersonal function in Chinese and English necessities expositions at various levels.At lexical level, both the English expositions and the Chinese expositions involve modal verbs and modal adjuncts for the purpose of introducing the possible effect a product may have. But the frequency of the two is much higher in Chinese than that in...