The Realization Of Interpersonal Meaning In Speech: From The Dynamic System Theory Perspective

As the globalization is gradually realized in many areas, counties in the world arebecoming more and more closely related. Under such environment, many governmentofficials and successful men always need to give some important speeches abroad. As therepresentative of the image of China, their speeches express our country’s view andattitude in various areas to a great degree, which will bring great influence to theinternational society. So the importance of their ability to make a good speech isself-evident. Then, how can the people at home finish their English speech in aninternational occasion successfully and realize the interpersonal meaning in the process ofspeech? This topic is getting more and more attention.One of the three important meta-functions of language is its interpersonal function,which refers to the exchanges of information and negotiation between the speakers and thelisteners. Many researches on interpersonal functions have been conducted from differentperspectives, among which Halliday’s Systemic-Functional Grammar is the most popularone. According to this system (Halliday), interpersonal meaning can be realized mainlyfrom mood and modality. This system, however, was restricted to grammatical level,which focused on the analysis of clauses. While, speech is not only a speaker’s speakingact, another important factors, such as audience, speech content and the interrelation arealso involved in this whole process. Then, how to give a systemic description to thisdynamic process will be a key topic. According to the Dynamic System Theory (De Bot),no matter what kind of object, its development process can be considered as a dynamicsystem, in which there involving many different variations. It is just the interaction amongthem that promote the development of the whole system. In this thesis, three successfulspeeches respectively made by Yang Lan and Jack Ma abroad have been selected. Base onthe Dynamic System Theory, further exploration to the realization of the interpersonalmeaning through setting interaction relationship between the speaker and the hearer hasbeen conducted. The research findings of the present study show that the four key parts ofDynamic System Theory, namely, initiate state, attractor, non-linearity and variation playsignificant role in the speech which is considered to be a dynamic system. They can helpthe speaker express their opinion completely and adapt themselves to set up and maintainthe interaction relationship with the hearers and realize the interpersonal meaning smoothly in the speech.This thesis tries to apply Dynamic System Theory to investigate the interpersonalmeaning in speeches. The results of this research provide a model for the theoreticalresearch and realization of interpersonal meaning. At the same time, it is also expected thatthe research findings in this thesis will be beneficial to the language learners’ learning ofEnglish and the improvement of their communicative ability.