A Corpus-based Study Of Interpersonal Function In A Study In Scarlet

Under the theoretical foundation of interpersonal function in Systemic Functional Grammar by Halliday, the thesis carries out a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the mood, modality and person systems in one of the Conan Doyle's detective novella A Study in Scarlet with the comparison of two corpora:CLOB by professor Xu Jiajin and Liang Maocheng; CASS which was built with A Study in Scarlet. On the one hand, the thesis analyzes the frequency and percentage of different mood types, modal operators, modal adjuncts as well as personal pronouns in both corpora, and conducts the comparative analysis of the similarities and differences between them. On the other hand, the author selects the representative examples from the novel and discusses in detail how they embody the corresponding interpersonal function in the story. Finally, the unique characteristics of mood, modality and person systems in A Study in Scarlet are obtained.In the analysis of the mood system, mood types are the focus of this part. Characters in the novel prefer to use declarative mood and interrogative mood to provide information and services for the listeners or get information and services. But frequency of imperative and exclamative mood in the detective story is very low. Due to the great association with emotion, exclamative mood is the least used mood type.When analyzing modality system, the thesis puts emphasis on two parts:modal operators and modal adjuncts. First, proportion of modal operators in the fiction was pretty high, especially modal operators of median value play significant role in delivering interpersonal function. Different operators may express the speaker's personal judgments on the given information, besides some modal operators may show the characters'special personality, such as politeness and obligation. Secondly, we see a relatively high frequency in the use of modal adjuncts in the story and the use of modal adjuncts makes the language in the story more concrete and objective.In the analysis of person system, three kinds of personal pronouns are mainly discussed. The frequency in the fiction is found to be comparatively high. It's found that the use of first and second personal pronouns is conductive to the intimacy of the speaker and the listener, so that the further interactions can be promoted.The quantitative and qualitative analyses on A Scarlet in Scarlet provide a different perspective for the researchers of this detective story. And the findings of the thesis may be of considerate value in studying this story from linguistic perspective.