Interpersonal Meaning In Written Discourses

Interpersonal meaning of language comes from interpersonal function of language, which is one component in the notion of metafunction in Halliday's Systemic-Functional Grammar. Interpersonal function refers to the fact that people use language to interact with other people, to establish and maintain relations with them, that is, to express the speaker's / writer's status, attitude and intention. Mood and modality are considered as important means to realize interpersonal meaning in language use. Besides, the use of personal pronouns also manifests interpersonal meaning in discourse. Interpersonal meaning stresses the interactivity of communication; therefore, exploring the use of mood, modality and personal pronouns should take context of situation into consideration.Sales promotion letters and Uniform Commercial Code belong to different types of discourses and their orientations are very different. Sales promotion letters, as a form of business communication, are not only used to provide information about the product, but also used to express the letter writer's intention of urging the potential customers to buy the product, while Uniform Commercial Code states the contents of the rules as well as conveys the legislator's intention of regulating commercial activities. This thesis takes some basic notions in Systemic-Functional Grammar together with Halliday's theory of context of situation consisting of field, tenor and mode as a framework to analyse the use of mood, modality and personal pronouns in samples of sales promotion letters and some excerpts from Uniform Commercial Code and investigate the means to realize interpersonal meaning in discourse. The aims of exploring interpersonal meaning in written discourses of different types and comparing their common features and special attributes are two: one is to reveal the different manifestation of interpersonal meaning and the writer's influence imposed on his target reader in specific context of situation as well, and the other is to prove"how to say"is as important as"what to say", only when people choose proper ways of speaking to construct meaning appropriate for the context of situation can they realize specific purpose of communication.