An Analysis Of Interpersonal Meaning In The Discussion Section Of English Research Articles

With the fast development of English discourse, English academic discourses become increasingly important. The research article is an important form of academic discourse. Nowadays, most of research articles published are written in English. What’s more, to publish English research articles in the world-famous journals can help researchers share their findings and ideas, and display their personal creativity. Besides, it has been widely acknowledged that academic writing involves interaction with readers. Therefore, researchers are anxious to improve their academic writing skills and know how to interact with readers in English research articles. Up to now, much attention has been paid to the structure and moves of research articles. The Discussion sections in research articles help writers evaluate and interpret the data related to their research problems. Therefore, the Discussion section is of great significance for a research article. However, little attention has been paid to the linguistic research on the Discussion section. In view of this, the present study analyzes the Discussion section of English research articles within the theoretical framework of Systemic Functional Grammar and the appraisal system to probe into the interpersonal meaning engrossed in the articles.Based on the theory of language interpersonal meaning put forward by Halliday, and the appraisal system developed by Martin and his colleagues, this study gives an analysis of the interpersonal meaning of Discussion sections of 60 English research articles from six top journals in linguistics, medicine and chemistry. The research makes a quantitative and qualitative study of the 60 Discussion sections from the systems of mood, modality, person system and evaluation to reveal the major features of the means to realize interpersonal meaning, including mood types, central modal verbs, modal adjuncts, personal pronouns, attitude, engagement and graduation resources in those Discussion sections.The research result shows that engagement and graduation resources are the most frequently used resources to convey interpersonal meanings in Discussion sections of English research articles in the three disciplines, which both account for more than 20%o. The study also reveals that modal adjuncts and person system are the least frequently employed means to convey interpersonal meanings in each group, both accounting for less than 8.5%o.However, there exist some limitations of the current study, for instance, the size of the corpus and the identification of those means to realize interpersonal meanings. This study can give some implications for researchers in the fields of linguistics, medicine and chemistry as to how to realize interpersonal meanings in Discussion sections of English research articles. Besides, the study can also be beneficial for teachers to teach academic writing and help students have a better understanding of academic writing and improve their writing skills.