Interpersonal Meaning Of English Hotel Introduction: A Systemic Functional Approach

As a type of introductory publicity discourse, hotel introductions play a vital role in establishing a sound public image of the hotel. The study of linguistic features of hotel introductions, however, has long been neglected in discourse analysis by many scholars. The present thesis attempts to explore the realizations of interpersonal meaning in English hotel introductions under the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). To facilitate the research, a corpus of 30 English hotel profiles is collected from hotel homepages and tourist websites and analyzed according to a model developed from M.A.K. Halliday's SFL and J.R. Martin's Appraisal System. The analysis is conducted at two levels, i.e. mood, modality and person system at the micro-social level or the lexico-grammatical level, and Attitude, Graduation, and Engagement at the macro-social level or the semantics level. Combining the quantitative and qualitative methodologies, it is found at the micro-social level that the speech function of information-giving is realized typically by declarative mood and metaphorically by imperative mood; while action-demanding is realized congruently by imperative mood and metaphorically by declarative mood. Interrogative mood is used to create a sense of"dialogue"between the writer and the reader. In terms of modality, the writer tends to use the median and low value modality, with the orientation of implicit subjectivity. This reflects the efforts of the writer to strike a balance between maintaining objectivity and intensifying persuasion. With respect to the person system, the interactive use of"we"and"you"has helped to construct solidarity with the reader. At the macro-social level, Appreciation takes up the most frequency among the three sub-systems of Attitude. Most of the evaluative words stand for positive assessment of the hotel amenities. In the system of Graduation, Force is more frequently employed than Focus, which indicates that the writer tends to use more Force values to reinforce the persuasive power of the introductory text. As for Engagement, Contract covers the largest proportion, which means that the writer tries to fend off alternative voices in order to assure the reader of the validity and authority of the information being conveyed. The data and instances of the present research would, hopefully, contribute to future studies of interpersonal meaning of English introductory publicity discourse, especially English hotel introductions, and throw some light on the writing and translation of hotel introductions.