| Systemic-functional grammar is the combination of"systemic grammar"and"functional grammar", both of which are interdependent and consistent. Systemic-functional grammar'theories have gradually developed with the concerted efforts of Halliday and many scholars. The theories are also used in many related fields to any appreciable extent, especially discourse analysis, which helps further understand literary or non-literary works by analyzing a variety of discourse.In systemic-functional grammar, Halliday puts forward three metafunctions of language: ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function. Interpersonal function means that people use language to communicate with each other, and establish and maintain relationship. People try to influence others'attitude and behavior when using language to express experiences in their real world including their inner world. This kind of interpersonal meaning can be expressed by modality.The study of modality is one of the hottest topics in linguistic history, but most of them were limited to the research on modal verbs. In recent years a great number of linguists have begun to study modal meaning in such literary forms as news reports, advertisements and legal texts. Prefaces to books have not been paid great attention to by scholars. This paper takes prefaces to books as the study subject. After differences existing in prefaces to books with different subjects and special requirements of quantitative research are taken into consideration, the research is narrowed down to prefaces to English linguistic books.Based on the theory of systemic-functional grammar, this paper focuses on the linguistic realization of modality in prefaces to linguistic books with the purpose of revealing how interpersonal function is performed by modality. It is hoped that the research in this paper can help people better understand the text of preface and find a better way of writing prefaces.
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