A Study Of Interpersonal Meaning In Hotel Brochures-a Systemic Functional Approach

The present thesis aims to investigate the realization of interpersonal meaning in the discourse of hotel brochures from the perspective of systemic functional grammar. One function of hotel brochures is to establish a good relationship between potential guests and the hotel, which is realized by the resource for interpersonal meaning. Interpersonal meaning originates from three metafunctions of language in systemic functional grammar and it is concerned with the strand of meaning produced when we use language to interact with other people, to establish and maintain relations with them, to influence their behavior, to express our own viewpoint on things in the world, and to elicit or change theirs (Halliday, 1994). According to Halliday the mood and modality systems are the basic means to realize interpersonal meaning lexico-grammatically in the clause. Based on Halliday's model of interpersonal meaning, other scholars (Martin, 1992; Thompson, 2000; Li Zhanzi, 2002) further enrich or extend the scope of interpersonal meaning. The researcher makes a critical view of the previous studies of interpersonal meaning and analyzes the realization of interpersonal meaning from four aspects: mood, modality, person system and evaluation in the discourse of hotel brochures.In this present research, we deliberately chose to focus on 40 brochures in 3-star hotels and above from different countries via mail or email from hotels and friends. To deal with the data, the present study combines quantitative and qualitative approaches.In the present research mood, modality, person system and evaluation are studied in detail to show how they are employed in the discourse of hotel brochures to realize interpersonal meaning. It is found that in the discourse of hotel brochures information-giving can be realized by declarative mood and also by interrogative and imperative mood structures. Action-demanding is realized by imperative mood and by declarative mood. The uses of interrogative and imperative mood structures together with "If conditional clause create a sense of "dialogue", which help to establish an interactive relationship to persuade the potential customers. Through the description of the modal expressions present in the corpus and the distribution and frequency of modal expressions in the discourse of hotel brochures, the present research discovers that modality of probability can make the comments less assertive. Modality also serves as a politeness device to enhance the interaction and negotiation between the hotel and the potential customers. All the person pronouns present in the samples are illustrated. The complex person system, especially the combination of first and second person pronouns and the referential switch, creates a sense of dialogue in the discourse so as to persuade the potential customers. Evaluation in the present research is analyzed at lexical and grammatical levels and it is found that such evaluative devices project strong persuasive power and thus perform the function of persuading the potential customers to take actions.