Interpersonal Meaning Of Fundraising Letters

American donation reaches 283 billions in 2005, 295 billions in 2006. According to the statistic of Giving USA Foundation, 76% of donation comes from ordinary people, that is, monthly small amount of donation of several or tens of dollars from thousands upon thousands ordinary people. As a matter of fact, such regular small amount of donation is of significance to raise money, and much more to arouse public sympathy and love among people, and lead the society to concern vulnerable group by the campaign of fundraising.Fundraising letters, as the most frequent way of raising money, not only give objective description of reason of fundraising as well as the present situation of campaign, but also get the potential donor moved and even taking action to donate willingly at last. At present, researches on fundraising have been undertaken from the perspectives of law and auditing for management at home. Few studies have been conducted to fundraising letters on linguistic focus, especially for their interpersonal meaning. As one of the three meta-functions of language according to systemic functional grammar, interpersonal meaning means that the speaker expresses his or her attitude and attempts to influence other's attitudes and behaviors by linguistic means in discourse. A basic framework for analyzing the possible realization of interpersonal meaning is developed from systemic functional grammar. Based on this elaborated framework, this research sets out to study the interpersonal meaning of the fundraising letters from person system, mood and modality. The analysis reveals that a variety of linguistic patterns has been used skillfully by the fundraiser to involve the potential donor in reading letters and sharing with him or her, and so to encourage and persuade the potential donor to take action. This research reaches the following findings: the various uses of person system are employed to elicit solidarity and closeness between the fundraiser and the potential donor; through the choice of mood structures moods of incongruent realization of speech roles could be more attractive, persuasive and soft to the potential donor, thus strengthen their interaction and negotiation; modal expressions are used to indicate the fundraiser's attitude,therefore making his or her comments appear less assertive, more responsible and respectful, and thus facilitate their negotiation and communication.