A Tentative Functional Approach To Interpersonal Meanings In ECST Discourse

Interpersonal meaning, one component of the three meanings in functional grammar,was first elaborated by Halliday in 1960s. It refers to how we use language to interact with other people, to establish and maintain relations with them, to influence their behavior, to express our own views on things in the world, and to elicit or change others'opinions. According to Halliday, interpersonal meaning is typically realized by mood, modality and key, which tend to be scattered prosodically throughout the unit. However, other linguists'works indicate that the linguistic devices realizing interpersonal meaning are not confined to the scope defined by Halliday, and the means are multiple. In this paper the author discusses interpersonal meaning of ECST from three perspectives, that is, person, mood, and modality. It is hoped that the present study will produce a keen insight into ECST writing, translation and teaching.EST (English for Science and Technology) falls into two categories, ESST (English for Specialized Science and Technology) and ECST (English for Common Science and Technology). The former one is quite specialized, written for experts in specific field, while the latter is widely used in nearly all areas. In this paper we will only discuss on ECST. ECST contents are less specialized and functions as conveying common scientific information to the potential ordinary readers. For many years studies on ECST discourse are mainly on lexis and grammar, cognitive linguistics, stylistics, systemic-functional grammar (mainly on the ideational aspect and textual aspect), or its practical use such as writing and translation, researches on its interpersonal meaning are few. However, besides conveying information, ECST discourse also reveals certain interpersonal relations, because in ECST discourse the participants are professionals and the lay public. On one hand, the writers as professionals know more than the lay public and they are in power status, on the other hand, the writers have a desire to maintain equal and trusty relationship with their readers, making them feel less suppressed. So this paper studies ECST discourse from a new perspective: interpersonal meaning, and hopes that it can be a helpful supplement to ECST studies. And offer some significant suggestions for ECST writing, translation and teaching, enabling both teachers and students to be better-informed about how to express interpersonal meanings approximately through lexico-grammar level in different ECST contexts in a native way.There are four chapters in this thesis.Chapter one functions as a literature review of the studies on discourse analysis, ECST discourse analysis and interpersonal meaning analysis abroad and at home, features and functions of ECST.Chapter two discusses the theoretical foundation of this thesis. In this part, the context theory, the register theory, and Halliday's three metafunctions are discussed. The author gives an elaboration on three approaches to realize interpersonal meaning in ECST discourse, that is, person, mood and modality.Chapter three and chapter four is the main body of this thesis. In chapter three, the author first deals with data collection and methodology, and then gives a detailed analysis of linguistic approaches, such as how person, mood, modality are employed to realize interpersonal meaning and how they realize interpersonal meanings in ECST discourse in this chapter, the author gives many tables and statistics to support the above discussions..Chapter four is concerned with practical implications of this thesis and offers some suggestions for ECST writing, translation and teaching.The conclusion is that through the study of interpersonal meaning in ECST discourse the writer may consciously use proper devices to interact successfully with the reader; also it can make the readers'understanding more comprehensible. The thesis also has some limitations because of time and data restriction.