The Interpersonal Meaning Of Live Soccer Commentaries In Chinese

There is a common belief that live soccer commentating should reflect the match fairly and without bias. However, live soccer commentating is always conditioned by points of view informed variously by the social subjectivity of the commentator. What events are commentated is not a reflection of the intrinsic importance of those events, but reveals the operation of the complex and personal intrusion of the match. It is such a special register that its language is rich in interpersonal meanings laden with contestation between different political groupings, ideological positions and cultural backgrounds. But such interpersonal meanings are so naturally backgrounded and encoded by the so-called objective strategies. Based on this assumption, this study, mainly employing Halliday's theory of interpersonal meaning on language, studies how the interpersonal meaning is realized in live soccer commentaries in Chinese.Interpersonal meaning means that language is used to interact with other people, to establish and maintain relations with them, to influence their behavior, to express our point of view on things in the world. The interpersonal meaning, however, can be realized through choosing from the network of lexico-grammatical system. And as its nature infers, the interpersonal meaning can be well demonstrated in live soccer commentaries in Chinese.This study aims to discuss linguistic characteristics of live soccer commentary discourses in Chinese and discover how the commentator reports the soccer events. It also tries to prove that Systemic-Functional Grammar put forward by Halliday is an effective methodology for Chinese discourse analysis, which may broaden the relevant theoretic studies through application in specific field.The interpersonal meaning is concerned with the interaction between the addresser and addressee, the grammatical resources for enacting social roles in general, speech roles in particular, in dialogic interaction which means establishing, changing and maintaining interpersonal relations. Data of the present research are transcribed from online service of the website http// bbs.qzwwx.com. Four linguistics patterns: mood, modality, person system and evaluation of the target discourses have been studied respectively. The present study demonstrates the close relationship between the interpersonal meaning of language and various lexico-grammatical patterns. The analyses reveal that linguistic resources have been employed skillfully by the commentator to realize the interpersonal meaning derived from the tenor of live soccer commentaries in Chinese. It has the following findings: 1) mood structures have been used typically and non-typically by the commentator to facilitate the interaction and negotiation with the potential audiences; 2) modality is used to indicate the commentator's attitude and at the same time to enhance his interaction and negotiation with the potential audiences; 3) The various uses of person pronouns help the commentator interact and negotiate with the potential audiences; 4) evaluation has been realized to perform two functions: expression opinions and maintaining relations.The reason why the author applies the theory of Systemic-Functional Grammar in this research is due to the fact that there are far fewer works done previously from this perspective. The findings of this thesis are helpful for an accurate understanding of live soccer commentary language in Chinese. At the same time, the application of Halliday's theory in this thesis shows that Systemic-Functional Grammar is quite useful and practical in Chinese discourse analysis.