An Analysis Of Interpersonal Meaning In English Business Letters Of Claim

In the background of economic globalization, trades between different countries have become increasingly frequent. So is business English getting more and more attention from people. There is a wide range of business letters and among which, letters of claim are much highly sensitive owing to involving the interests of both sides. In the process of trading, shortage in weight, poor packing, delayed delivery and so on is unavoidable. Under such circumstances, claim letters can serve as a means of communication between the two trading sides. Instead of criticizing and complaining the other party, the communicative purpose of claim letters is to promote problem solving, maintain a good cooperation relationship between both sides and get the reasonable compensation as well. Therefore, how to express one’s idea and attitude in a proper way in the letter without interfering friendly cooperation has become a priority for the claimants. For that reason, the interpersonal meaning of letters of claim plays an extremely vital role.The three meta-functions of language are:ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function. The speaker can not only use language to express his experiences and mental activities, but also shows his identity, status and attitude. Interpersonal function is to build up relationships by distribution and attitude of language roles through language. In certain situational response with language’s interpersonal function, the speaker is able to express his attitudes and views, trying to influence the judgment of others and thus achieve his expected response. According to the interpersonal function of language, Halliday has built up the language’s interpersonal meaning system (Halliday,1985/1994:68-69). He points out that interpersonal meaning can be mainly realized from mood and modality system, among which mood system is the interaction between sentences, involving the role relations of speakers while modality system relates to the attitudes of them.While the theory of interpersonal function which is under the framework of functional grammar with Halliday as its representatives is chosen as theoretical basis,30claim letters of international business are selected from text books, along with another10letters from the internet or some companies in the real business activities as data. This paper employs the qualitative and quantitative research methods to respectively analyze how the interpersonal meanings of person pronouns, mood and modality are realized in claim letters and the frequency of language resources expressing interpersonal meanings used in the40claim letters. The study found that the first person plural form we is mostly seen in the person system, which is used to shorten the social distance between two parties. Declarative clause is the major mood type, aiming to conveying information and expressing the claimant’s will. As to the modality system, the median and low value modal verbs earn the highest occurrence, with the purpose of lodging the claim in a polite way and making it liable to be accepted. Analyzing the interpersonal meanings of claim letters, exploring and revealing the methods of how interpersonal meanings are realized in claim letters from the perspective of functional grammar, the author hopes the study can provide some implications for business English writing and teaching, at the same time expand the study of interpersonal meaning.