A Comparative Study Of Interpersonal Meta-Function On Steve Jobs’ And Bill Gates’s Sanford Commencement Addresses From The Perspectives Of Systemic Functional Grammar And Appraisal Theory

People have created language and employed it and it is developing through application. The systemic functional grammar created by Halliday provides a theoretical framework to discourse analysis, which can be used to analyze any verbal or written discourse in English. By Halliday, there are three theoretical functions in language, namely, the ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function. Interpersonal function means that people use words to connect with others, to build up and maintain relationship with them. Interpersonal meaning is realized by two semantic systems, including mood and modality. As an important component of interpersonal function, interpersonal meaning manifests how the speakers express their judgements in contents and attempt to influence audiences’attitudes and behaviors. In the grammatical level, Halliday’s systemic-functional grammar focuses the study on interpersonal meaning, whereas Martin’s appraisal theory investigates the interpersonal meaning in the discourse level. Appraisal theory studies how the attitudes, judgments and emotive responses are definitely demonstrated in texts and how they can be more indirectly implied or presupposed. Based on Halliday’s systemic functional grammar and Martin’s appraisal theory, this paper focuses on the comparative study of interpersonal meta-function between Steve Jobs’and Bill Gates’address made on Stanford commencement from the grammatical and discourse levels. It aims to explore the connection between them and investigate how the speakers realize the interpersonal meaning in their addresses.The present paper analyzes the selected addresses from four aspects such as mood, modality, personal pronoun and appraisal theory. Firstly, in the mood system, the frequency of the declarative mood takes the dominant position in these two commencement addresses respectively, followed by the imperative mood and the interrogative mood. The speaker uses the declarative to provide information, indicate his points of view, show his suggestion and expectations to the audience. Interrogatives are not for the purpose of obtaining, but used by the speaker to attract the audience’s attention and set up the interaction between them. By means of imperatives, the author attempt to fuel the audience’s passion and confidence, and expect them to take real actions. Secondly, regarding the use of modality system, the frequency of median-value modal auxiliary and the low-value modal auxiliary is more than the high-value modal auxiliary. Thirdly, among the three types of personal pronouns, the first person pronouns are all used most frequently in these two selected commencement addresses. The frequency of the second person pronoun is less than that of first person pronouns and the third person pronoun is the least one in Steve Jobs’commencement address. By contrast, in Bill Gates’commencement address, the frequency use of the third person pronoun is less than the first person pronoun, with the second person pronoun being the least. To be specific, as the information provider in the address, the speaker employs the first person pronoun to indicate his responsibility for his utterance with the purpose of improving the credibility to the address and building up a natural relationship between them. The use of the second person pronoun is to refer to the audience so as to make them into the interaction with the speaker in address, while the function of the third personal pronoun to express that the speaker inclines to remain an objective point of view. At last, according to the appraisal theory, the attitude system and graduation system are mainly adopted to examine how the interpersonal meaning is realized in these commencement addresses. By the attitude system, the speakers tends to take positive evaluation in these two commencement addresses, demonstrating the speaker’s willingness to express confident emotions, assess optimistic behaviors and show the positive appreciative attitudes. As for the graduation system, it is applied to adjust the degree between the subjectivity and objectivity. With the help of the sub-categories of focus and force, the attitude of the speaker can be strengthened or weakened. According to appraisal theory, speakers can demonstrate their attitudes, adjust the relationship with audiences, thus achieving their aims of communication.Based on Halliday’s systemic-functional grammar and Martin’s appraisal theory, this thesis focuses on the comparative study of interpersonal meta-function between Steve Jobs’and Bill Gates’address conducted on Stanford commencement from the grammatical and discourse levels. This thesis widens Halliday’s framework to analyze the interpersonal meta-function to some extent, making people develop a good understanding of the interpersonal meaning of commencement addresses. By the method of comparative study, this thesis aims to investigate the regulations and similarities of the selected addresses so as to shed some lights to the domains such as western campus culture and public speeches.