Interpersonal Function Analysis Of Modality In Prclcl

PRCLCL (Labor Contract Law of People's Republic of China) is the legislative discourse involving every aspect of the relation of the labour, which plays an important part in the law system. As a legal text, PRCLCL is given scant attention from the perspective of interpersonal function of modality system. The thesis takes functional grammar as the theoretical backup and investigates the interpersonal function of modality system in PRCLCL.According to Halliday and Matthiessen (1997), the interpersonal metafunction is concerned with the interaction between the speaker and the addressee(s), which they view as a kind of grammatical resource (a network of inter-connected systems) for enacting social roles in general, and speech roles in particular, in dialogic interaction to establish, change, and maintain interpersonal relations. One of major grammatical systems of interpersonal function is modality, which bears the speaker's assessment of the truth of his/her message, or his/her attitude toward the statement.This thesis focuses on the types, orientations, values and the linguistic realizations of modality system in PRCLCL with the aims of revealing the characteristics of interpersonal function realized by modal expressions. The study shows the modal expressions in PRCLCL nearly all belong to the modulation type of the modality; all of them are the objective orientation with high and low values; the linguistic realization of modality in it is all modal verbs. The significance of these findings is to contribute to a deeper understanding of PRCLCL to help to maintain the objectivity of the law by the modality and to supplement and improve the teaching key points and contents of the legal discourse.