A Comparative Study Of The Means For Realizing Interpersonal Meaning In Chinese And American Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Speeches

As one of three metafunctions in Halliday’s systemic-functional grammar, interpersonal function will produce interpersonal meaning in the process of communication. Interpersonal meaning stresses the function of interactivity, and language is used to establish and maintain social relationship, influence listener’s behavior, express opinions about events and elicit or change listener’s views.Taking Halliday’s theory about interpersonal function as the theoretical framework, and adopting the combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches. The thesis analyzes the data from official English website of PRC Foreign Ministry Affairs including 74 regular press conference transcripts from September,2015 to December,2015 and the website of Department of US consisting 68 Daily Press Briefings in the same period to study the interpersonal meaning.There are three research questions. (1) How are interpersonal meanings realized through mood, modality and person system in the speeches of Chinese and American Foreign Ministry spokespersons? (2) What are similarities and differences of the realization between Chinese and American Foreign Ministry spokespersons’ speeches? (3) What causes these similarities and differences of the realizations of interpersonal meanings in the speeches of Chinese and American Foreign Ministry spokespersons?According to the comparative study, the following conclusions are reached. First, interpersonal meaning is realized through comparative of mood types, modality types, modality orientation, modality value and person systems. Second, through comparative analysis of speeches of Chinese and American Foreign Ministry spokespersons, it is found that they both use more declarative to state and tend to apply implicit orientation to express their attitudes and viewpoints; the proportion of first person pronoun is the largest. The differences between Chinese and American:American spokespersons tend to use more negative declarative, implicit subjective, low value modal operators and the first person pronoun "I" to express opinions; while, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokespersons use more high value modal operators, the first person pronoun "我们" and implicit objective to express viewpoints. Third, this study shows that different historical and cultural backgrounds are the reasons for different characteristics of Chinese and American Foreign Ministry spokespersons’ speeches. Chinese culture is based on Confucianism, advocating the inland culture as contracted, harmonious, moderate and balanced. In virtue of mentioned features, the characteristics of Chinese collective spirit are national unity, territorial integrity and national interest. The high frequency of person pronoun "we" in speeches of CFM spokespersons shows Chinese state attitude and represents all citizens’aspirations. However, in the field of American thinking, individual rights are usually above sovereignty, and they maximize the individual value and incline to use explicit negative in expressing personal views. These cultural differences belong to different state ideologies, which are important causes for the characters of discourse between Chinese and American Foreign Ministry affairs.Through theoretical and empirical research, these conclusions can benefit deeper understanding of different political cultures, and they can also enrich the scope of applications of systemic functional grammar.