A Comparative Study On The Dialogicality Of English And Chinese Hard News Discourses From The Perspective Of Interpersonal Function

The Functional Grammar proposed by Halliday provides discourse analysis with an operable and applicable theoretical framework. According to Halliday’s Functional Grammar, language has three meta-functions, which are the ideational function, the interpersonal function and the textual function. The interpersonal function of language means that people use language to describe the world, to establish interactive relationship, to express attitudes and viewpoints and to influence the ideas, and even the behaviors of the listeners. The interpersonal function is mainly realized through the mood system, the modality system and the person system. However, on the account of different cultural and social backgrounds, the ways by which the interpersonal function is realized vary in different languages. While Bakhtin’s dialogism proposes that one of the most important function of language is communication, because dialogue exists in every field of human life and dialogue is the essence of human life. Bakhtin’s linguistic ideology is thus called trans-linguistics, because his linguistic ideology has surpassed the research scope of general linguistics when he endowed language with the nature of communication and dialogicality. The core of Bakhtin’s dialogism is to study linguistic phenomena, the nature, forms and features of language communication from a grand perspective of people’s social contact and interaction. Then in the sense of the communicative function and dialogic nature of language, the most significant role of the dialogicality is to reveal the interpersonal function in the discourse. The process during which dialogic relationship is revealed is also the process its interpersonal meaning is achieved. The interpersonal function therefore provides a new study perspective and a feasible framework for the discourse analysis of dialogicality.Having expounded on the theories of dialogism on a macroscopic level, Bakhtin has done dialogicality analysis on a limited number of literary works of the Russian writer Dostoevsky. Regrettably, he did not apply the theories of dialogism to the analysis of public discourses. Recent researches show that dialogism is applicable to a wide range of disciplines, inclusive of philosophy, literature, linguistics, sociology, mass communication, pedagogy and so on. Now as we are living in an information age, we exchange information with each other in daily life, while the mass media try to reach us through various channels. The written news report can disclose people’s activities and uncover the interactive relationship between people, so it is safe to say that news report is a way to reflect dialogicality among people, in this sense, news report is dialogic in nature. In the present research, forty English and Chinese written hard news discourses are selected from the mainstream news media of America, U.K. and China as analytical targets. On the basis of the three systems of interpersonal function: mood system, modality system and person system, case study will be employed together with quantitative analysis to carry out a comparative analysis on the English and Chinese hard news discourses so as to disclose how dialogicality reveals itself and shows the interpersonal meaning through the three systems in the discourses and their similarities and differences, with a view to offering a new perspective to dialogicality analysis and discourse comparative study. Hopefully, the present research can help readers better understand the information that the news reports try to convey from another reading angle.The present research suggests that dialogicality realizes interpersonal meaning through mood system, modality system and person system in both English and Chinese hard news discourses. In mood system, the degree of dialogic interaction between the speaker and the readers revealed in the imperative mood and interrogative mood is higher than that in declarative mood. In modality system, the space for readers to negotiate or compete with the speaker becomes smaller as the value of modal operator increases; while different types of modal adjuncts conduce to dialogicality from different perspectives. In person system, first and second person pronouns are employed to cut distance between the speaker and the readers; third person pronouns are utilized to introduce other voices. And dialogic interaction is shaped during the process. Furthermore, level of dialogicality carried by mood and modality system is higher in Chinese than in English hard news discourses, while level of dialogicality embodied by person system is higher in English than in Chinese hard news discourses.