A Contrastive Study Of The Interpersonal Function Of Chinese And English International Political News Reports

M. A. K. Halliday pointed out that language has three metafunctions, namely, experiential, interpersonal, and textual. Systemic Functional Grammar provides a theoretical framework for discourse analysis. As Professor Huang Guowen pointed out, theoretical framework, more practical than any other theories, can be used to analyze the discourse either it is written or spoken.Political news discourse is considered to have the features of news with its own specialty. It is true, timely,and of class nature. The report should be objective to consist with the fact. However, absolute objectivity does not exist in news report since observation is usually constrained or determined by cultural preconceptions and traditions.This thesis mainly employs Halliday's theory of the interpersonal function to study how Chinese and English newspapers construct value and ideology. The thesis analyzes 10 pieces of international political news collected from the Chinese newspaper "People's Daily" and the American newspaper "New York Times". The study adopts a contrastive way and mainly focuses on the interpersonal meaning in international political news realized through mood, modality, comment adjunct, and so on. The study result is as follows:firstly, social beliefs and attitudes are represented in political news, but they appear more subtly and indirect; secondly, the dominant mood is declarative; thirdly the frequent use of third person, usually from which words of others were quoted, is to make the report objective as well as subjective; finally, modal verbs are rarely seen while mood adjuncts and comment adjuncts are commonly used to express the reporter's attitudes.The findings of this thesis can help the readers understand political news and judge a news story critically. Furthermore, the application of Halliday's theory in this thesis shows that functional grammar is quite useful and practical in discourse analysis.