Analysis Of Interpersonal Function Realization In B To B Website Profiles

Interpersonal function is one of the three metafunctions which were put forward by Halliday who is the founder of systemic-functional grammar. Interpersonal function refers that people use language to establish and maintain social relationship, influence listener's behavior, express opinions about events, elicit or change listener's views. Interpersonal function can deliver information, as well as reflect speaker' identity, status and attitude. Halliday points out that interpersonal function is mainly realized by mood and modality, meanwhile, he also regards person system as a way to realize interpersonal function.Since the commencement of Halliday's study on interpersonal function, interpersonal function has gained attention from many linguists and has been applied to studying different corpus such as studying the interpersonal function of advertisements and news. In this thesis, Halliday's interpersonal function theory is employed as the theoretical framework and 50 famous B2B (Business to Business) website profiles are selected as the data so as to study the interpersonal function of B2B website profiles. All the 50 B2B profiles are selected from famous B2B websites at home and abroad which are classified in a category on www.dragon-guide.com (a professional B2B websites gathering website). The function of a B2B profile is to attract, persuade and motive users to spend money on B2B websites'services by relative introduction. As we know, a B2B profile is an online written text, which is different from traditional face-to-face communication or a written text on a paper, so the realization of B2B profiles will have its own characteristics. In this thesis, the analysis of the interpersonal realization realization of B2B profiles is carried out from the following three aspects: mood, modality and person.The result gives a detailed analysis of mood, modality and person system in realizing B2B website profiles. From the mood aspect, it is showed that declarative mood structure is the dominant mood type in realizing interpersonal function of B2B profiles from mood perspective, declarative mood structure accounts for 90.66% in all mood types; besides mood types, modal adjunct which includes mood adjunct and comment adjunct can also realize mood system, it is found that mood adjunct which occupies 42.31%, occupies less proportion than comment adjunct which is 57.69% in modal adjuncts.From modality perspective, modal operator is the dominant modal expressions in expressing modality in 50 B2B websites, accounting for 74.57%. Modalization is adopted as the main modality type, subjective implicit is the dominant modality orientation, low value modal expressions are adopted most frequently in the modality value, followed by median value and high value modal expressions, which shows B2B company's indirect attitude to imply the uncertainty and risk in doing business on the B2B websites.From person system perspective, "we" to refer to B2B operating companies and "you" to refer to users are used most frequently, by so doing, the effect of face-to-face interactive communication is formed, which is helpful to involve and attract users. Therefore, the employment of first person pronoun to refer to B2B operating companies and second person pronoun to refer to users can best achieve the interpersonal function of B2B websites.