A Contrastive Study Of Interpersonal Meaning In Chinese And English Company Profiles-Systemic Functional Approach

Language is used by people not only to describe the world around them, but also interact with each other in order to establish and maintain relations with them, to influence their attitude or behavior, to express their viewpoints, and to elicit or change theirs. This function is termed as interpersonal meaning. Its realization may vary across different social and cultural factors. This thesis then sets out to make a contrastive study of interpersonal meaning in a corpus of Chinese and English company profiles based on the analytical framework combining Halliday's systemic functional grammar with Martin's appraisal theory. 30 authentic Chinese and English company profiles are randomly selected from the famous companies' websites. The research is carried out at the micro-social level as well as the macro-social level. At the micro-social level an investigation is made in terms of mood, modality, person system and tense; at the macro-social level, an analysis is conducted based on the Martin's appraisal framework, i.e. attitude, graduation and engagement. Followed by this multi-level model, it aims to explore how interpersonal meaning is realized in different social and cultural contexts.The analysis reveals that the writers of CCPs and ECPs skillfully deploy various linguistic resources to realize the interpersonal meaning of the company profiles. They share many similarities, yet a huge difference between them does exist in terms of realization of interpersonal meaning. Similarities can be seen from preference to declarative moods, large amounts of low and median value modal operators, extensive distribution of the present tense, high frequency of judgment and appreciation, wide use of force-rising etc. Disparities between them are outstanding: (1) More interrogatives and imperatives are used in ECPs, while more exclamatives are deployed in CCPs. (2) Median value modal operators are preferred by CCPs while low and median value modal operators are more frequently distributed in ECPs. (3) ECPs show much more preference to the use of pronoun system, while CCPs tend to employ proper names, i.e. the company's name. (4) The past tense is much more frequently employed by CCPs than by ECPs. (5) CCPs show their preference to the non-authorial affects while authorial affects are the like of ECPs. (6) CCPs tend to be more dialogic contraction while ECPs are inclined to be more dialogic expansion.These differences can be attributed to the different social-cultural backgrounds. By considering social-cultural factors such as power distance, collectivism vs. individualism, past-oriented vs. present-oriented and high vs. low context, it is safe to conclude that different social-cultural backgrounds would have an effect on the realization of interpersonal meaning in the company profiles.