On The Realization Of Interpersonal Meaning Of Diplomatic Language

Interpersonal meaning of language derives from interpersonal function oflanguage，which is one of the three metafunctions in Halliday’s systemic-functionalgrammar. Interpersonal meaning stresses the interactivity of communication, and itrefers to that people use language to establish and maintain social relationship,influence listener’s behavior, express opinions about events, elicit or change listener’sviews.Halliday considers mood system and modality system as important means torealize interpersonal meaning. The addresser usually chooses a certain speech role andlet the hearer play a complementary speech role, then continually change speech role.People can demand or give goods&services and information by language. Speechrole (giving and demanding) and commodity exchanged (goods&services andinformation) form the four primary speech function: offer, command, statement andquestion. Statements are usually expressed by declarative, question by interrogative,command by imperative, and offer by declarative, interrogative or imperative whichrealize respectively different kinds of interpersonal meaning. Besides, mood adjunctsare important parts of mood system. Mood structures are the sentence level analysison mood structure of interpersonal meaning in texts while mood adjuncts are thelexical level analysis on mood structure of interpersonal meaning. Modality system isanother important realization of interpersonal meaning. Modality system consists ofmodality type, modality value and modality orientation. Halliday divides modalitysystem into modalization and modulation, formalizes three basic values of high,median and low on the scale, distinguishes four orientations of subjective explicit,subjective implicit, objective explicit and objective implicit. In addition, personalsystem is taken as one of means to realize interpersonal meaning in Halliday’s laterresearch. Study of pronouns in a specific context can be a clue for the study of attitudethe addresser to the reader or listener and also the relationship between them. In this thesis, Halliday’s theory of interpersonal meaning is employed as thetheoretical framework and a combination of quantitative and qualitative approacheshas been applied in this research to analyze the data downloaded from official Englishwebsite of Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China so as tostudy the interpersonal meaning in diplomatic language. This research is carried out inthree categories: mood system, modality system and personal system. In the analysisof mood system of diplomatic data, the results show that different speech roles can berealized by different mood structures; on the other hand, diplomats deliberately usesvarious mood adjuncts to express judgment or attitude in order to draw othersattentions, put themselves on an authoritative position and make an affectivecommunication. In the analysis of modality system of diplomatic data, it proves thatobligation and inclination are corresponding to command and offer in the proposalrespectively. From the value perspective, the data shows that the median value modalexpressions occupy the largest proportion. From the orientation perspective, anaddresser selects different types of orientation to properly express his/her point inorder to achieve certain diplomatic purpose.In the end, the personal system analysis sets to analyze the first person pronouns,the second person pronouns and the third person pronouns. The first person pronounsare mostly employed in15samples according to the data. By using the exclusive firstperson pronoun we, the addresser makes the remarks more impersonal and moreformal, and the exclusive first person pronoun I can function as realizing theaddresser’s interpersonal meaning of involvement or power towards the addressee. Onthe other hand, use of the inclusive we is a strategy which can be employed to easecontradiction, make less divergence in their interests and thus attempt to influence theother’s attitude or behavior. Application of second person pronouns draws theaddressee’s attention and enhances the interaction. The third person pronouns refer tothe person or object mentioned in the previous part.The present research, first, hopefully, may help people at home and abroad have abetter understanding of communication skills in diplomatic activities. At the sametime, it gives a close look at China’s diplomacy on the basis of a clear view of the skillfulness the Chinese diplomats use. Third, the present research will enrich thestudy of diplomatic discourse from the perspective of the systemic-functionalgrammar.