An Exploration Into Interpersonal Meaning Of Eco-hotel English Introduction Discourse

In recent years, environmental issues have increasingly become the focus of global concern.With an aim to enhance people’s awareness of eco-environmental protection, the eco-hotelcomes into being. As the media of external publicity, the eco-hotel introduction plays a decisiverole in publicizing the image of eco-hotel and influencing reader’s choice, thus it is particularlyessential to explore how the interpersonal meaning is realized in the eco-hotel introductiondiscourse. Hitherto, domestic and foreign scholars have conducted extensive studies oninterpersonal meaning in various types of discourse. However, researches on interpersonalmeaning of hotel introduction discourse, English eco-hotel introduction in particular, are barelyfound. Therefore, to fill the gap, the present study discusses the realization of the interpersonalmeaning of English eco-hotel introduction discourse from the perspective of systematicfunctional grammar, for the purpose of revealing how the interpersonal meaning is achieved stepby step in the discourse.Employing Halliday’s systematic functional grammar and Martin’s appraisal system astheoretical framework, the present research examines the achievement of interpersonal meaning ineco-hotel introduction. From the angle of systematic functional grammar, the interpersonalmeaning refers to the meaning that the speaker applies language to interact with the listener, toconvey his/her own attitude, to build and keep relationship with the other party, and to intrude theother’s decisions and behaviors. According to Halliday, the interpersonal meaning can be studiedat micro level from three aspects, namely mood, modality and person system, yet his research ismerely confined to lexico-grammatical level. To make up for the deficiency of Halliday’s study,Martin semantically expands the study of interpersonal meaning at macro level by proposing theappraisal theory. The appraisal system consists of three subsystems including attitude, affect andjudgment and it reflects people’s evaluation of things, attitudes and positions. For an in-depthexploration of interpersonal meaning, the present research probes into the realization ofinterpersonal meaning at micro and macro levels based on Halliday’s interpersonal model andMartin’s appraisal theory.The corpus of the study contains thirty English eco-hotel introductions that are selected from the “eco-hotel of the world” website. With the aid of UAM Corpus Tool2.8.14, both qualitativeand quantitative approaches are employed in the analysis of the interpersonal meaning. Throughthe quantitative method, the distribution and percentage of interpersonal resources are calculated.As a complementary to the quantitative research, the qualitative research expounds the statisticsresults.The major findings of the present study are as follows:(1) the speech role of informationgiving is mainly realized by the declarative mood, enjoying the highest frequency while theaction-demanding function is typically achieved by imperatives. In addition, the function ofcreating a dialogic atmosphere is realized by the interrogative mood and “if” patterns.(2) Inmodality system, the writer prefers median and low value of modality so that he/she can reducethe affirmativeness of the text and leave much room for the reader. In addition, the great amountof implicit subjective modality maintains a balance between objectivity and subjectivity for thediscourse.(3) As for person system, it is observed that different person pronouns play differentroles. The use of third person pronouns helps enhance the objectivity and persuasiveness of thehotel introduction while the first and second person pronouns can draw the two parties closer,which makes the information more acceptable.(4) In appraisal system, as far as attitude isconcerned, appreciation resources cover the largest proportion among its three sub-systems.Most of appraisal resources are positive words for the reason that the writer intends to highlightthe advantages of the eco-hotel and impress the readers. From the perspective of graduation,force is used more frequently than focus, illustrating that the writer is apt to employ more forceresources to strengthen the credibility and reliability of the eco-hotel introduction. In terms ofengagement, contract appears most frequently and contract resources contribute to restrict thescope for alternative and other voices in order to ensure the authority of the given information.The present study on the realization of interpersonal meaning in eco-hotel introductions hascertain practical and theoretical significance. Theoretically speaking, the analytical model basedon Halliday’s and Martin’s interpersonal models is proved to be effective for the exploration ofinterpersonal meaning in eco-hotel introduction. Besides, the study can broaden the researchrelated to interpersonal meaning and linguistic features of hotel discourse. In practice, the studynot only provides some implications for the comprehension, writing, translation of hotel profiles,but also it can shed light on English teaching. Hopefully, the study can raise people’s awareness of eco-environmental protection.