A Contrastive Study On Interpersonal Meaning Of Modality System In Chinese And American Diplomatic Press Conference Discourses

With the development of economic globalization, the relationship between countries become closer. Diplomatic press conference becomes an important means for government to release information and each diplomatic press conference deals with daily business. And the function of the diplomatic press conference is to release important policies and to express its standpoints or attitudes towards some vital events to the median and the public timely, which is an important way to guarantee citizens’ right to know and right to political participation. In diplomatic press conference, the duty of spokesperson is to give information and answer the journalists’ questions on behalf of his country. Therefore, the spokesperson should adopt the most appropriate way to speak more properly in order to achieve the purposes of the press conference.According to Halliday’s functional grammar, modality is the main realization of interpersonal meaning. The author finds that there’s a high frequency of the occurrence of modality in diplomatic press conference discourses. Therefore, based on the theory of interpersonal meaning, the thesis makes a contrastive analysis on the realization of interpersonal meaning from the perspective of modality system, in order to find out the similarities and differences of interpersonal meanings reflected by modality system in Chinese and American diplomatic press conference discourses and the reasons for the similarities and differences. The study will explore the following questions:(1) What modality expression is mostly adopted in Chinese and American diplomatic press conference discourses?(2)What are the similarities and differences in the realization of the modality in Chinese and American diplomatic press conference discourses?(3)What are the similarities and differences of interpersonal meanings reflected by modality system in Chinese and American diplomatic press conference discourses?(4)What different power distance culture and different value are revealed by the differences?The author selects 35 pieces of press conference discourses from the website of PRC foreign Ministry and the website of States Department of the United States respectively, which all ranges from May 2010 to May 2013. The research adopts an integrated way of qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis. The thesis is conducted in four levels: frequency of modal occurrence, modal operator, modal adjunct and metaphors of modality. The author makes an analysis on modal operator from two perspectives: type and value, and makes an analysis on modal adjunct from two perspectives: mood adjunct and comment adjunct. We can find that modal operator and modal adjunct are the main realizations of the modality system, and the total proportion they take is 96.54% and 92.91%. Besides, the similarities lie in the following aspects:(1) In terms of modal operators, the number of probability takes the lead both in American and Chinese corpus, and both the spokespersons follow the objectivity of the information and politeness principle.(2) In terms of metaphors of modality, the more adoption of subjective explicit items are preferred by the American spokesperson and the Chinese spokesperson and the proportion each take is 93.69% and 96.58%. Subjective explicit expressions are used to personalize the spokespersons’ statements, to reduce the government’s responsibility and promote the communication between the spokesperson and the reporters. At the same time, we can find some differences through analysis.(1) In terms of the value of modal operators in the two corpus, compared with American corpus, there’s a high frequency of occurrence of high value modals in Chinese corpus. The proportion of high value modals take in Chinese corpus is 42.07% while in American corpus is only 22.1%. The more adoptions of high value modal adjuncts in Chinese corpus by the spokesperson reflects the high power distance culture in China, and the high power distance culture emphasize the power distance between the spokesperson and the audiences to show the authority of the spokesperson.(2) Compared with the modal operator of obligation used in American corpus, the occurrence of obligation committing to modal operator in Chinese corpus is a little higher. The differences reveal that the two countries belong to different power distance culture and show different value. The findings can promote a deeper understanding of the features, similarities and differences of interpersonal meanings reflected in this kind of discourse, and how the spokespersons achieve their respective purposes through the expressions of interpersonal meaning.