Analysis Of The Interpersonal Meaning Conveyed By Modal Adjuncts In2012US Presidential Debate

Based on Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), language has three metafunctions:ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function. Interpersonal function refers that people use language to interact with others, establishing and maintaining interpersonal relationship with them; and to have an influence on others’ attitude and behaviors or to express their opinion on the world. In discourse analysis, it is believed that interpersonal meaning is mainly realized by Mood and Modality, which consists of the system of Modality in a broader sense. Of the various ways of realizing interpersonal meaning, modal adjunct is an important part. As a category of adjunct, which has not the potential to be the Subject in a sentence, modal adjuncts are largely composed of adverbials and propositional expressions. Halliday categorized modal adjuncts into mood adjunct and comment adjunct based on their intimacy with the mood grammar.Debate, with a long history, is a kind of conversational practice in which debaters express their views on some problems and reveal contradictions in others’language or behaviors in order to reach the mutual recognition on the major issues. Debate provides an excellent stage for the language to display its powerful influence. And its influence on people’s behaviors can be better displayed in a political debate. As a special political discourse, American presidential debate plays an important role in American politics. In the presidential debate, the candidates for president should deal with numerous and complex interpersonal relations in a manner of verbal debate. Their spontaneous speech on the debate could better display their personality and interpersonal relationship. To gain more support from the voters and to win the election, they have to use tactful strategies to maximize their own advantages and the opponent’s disadvantages.This thesis will employ the interpersonal metafunction within Halliday’s systemic functional grammar to analyze the interpersonal meaning conveyed by modal adjuncts in the2012US presidential debate. The realization of interpersonal meaning by modal adjuncts can be testified. And it also provides an example of the interpersonal analysis in specific discourses.