A Systemic Functional Approach To English Metadiscourse

A discourse has two panels: primary discourse and metadiscourse. Metadiscourse is the discourse about discourse. Metadiscourse, coined by Harris in 1970, as a relatively new concept in discourse analysis, has received increasing interest in recent years. Many scholars at home and abroad have carried out the research on metadiscourse from different perspectives: cognitive, functional, sociolinguistic, rhetorical, Psycholinguistic and other perspectives.Until now, the commonest description of metadiscourse is that metadiscourse does not add the propositional meaning to the content, but projects the writer into the discourse and helps to guide and direct his readers to organize, interpret, evaluate, and react to the propositional content as well as the writer's attitude towards the discourse and readers. What metafunctions does metadiscourse have?In order to answer this question, this thesis, based on the metadiscourse schema modified from previous definitions and classifications, studies three metafunctions of Systemic Functional Grammar on the use of metadiscourse in the discourse. From the study, we can find that the definition and categories of metadiscourse applied in this thesis can be acceptable logically; and because metadiscourse is multi-facet functionality, it has more than one-form-one-function correspondence; that is to say, it can simultaneously convey ideational, interpersonal and textual meanings. This thesis totally has six chapters. After the current introductory chapter, Chapter Two first introduces the concept of metadiscourse and some related concepts, and then it reviews both theoretical and empirical studies of metadiscourse. In the last part of this chapter, it gives a revised definition and classification of metadiscourse. Metadiscourse is defined as linguistic elements that help to add new propositional content for the completion of a discourse, convey the writer's emotions, attitudes and comments about the primary discourse, indicate the organizational structure of a discourse, and interact with readers. The main categories of metadiscourse based on the revised definition are: ideational metadiscourse, interpersonal metadiscourse and textual metadiscourse; From Chapter Three to Chapter Five, this thesis investigates metadiscourse respectively from the perspective of Halliday's metafunctions. Chapter Three analyzes how the transitivity and voice systems are ideationally realized in metadiscourse. Chapter Four focuses on discussing how Mood and Modality are employed in metadiscourse to represent interpersonal metafunction. Chapter Five analyzes the relation between metadiscourse and conjunction, and how the thematic structure is realized in metadiscourse. Chapter Six concludes the thesis by summarizing the major findings and then pinpointing its limitations and finally making some prospects for future research.