A Study Of Interpersonal Meaning In Emma

In recent years, SFG(systemic functional grammar) has become a popular theory for discourse analysis. More and more researchers pay their attention to the interpersonal, changeable and negotiable aspects of language. Interpersonal function has been used to analyze various texts such as advertising, broadcasting, academic paper, translation of poems and so on. However, it is seldom used to study literary works.Emma is the masterpiece of Austen, which is described and commented by many western writers and critics as a most profound and detailed creation of the nineteenth century in British society. Since its publication, many scholars both at home and abroad have studied it from different aspects. According to the data available, for nearly 10 years, domestic researches on the works of Austen have been mainly concentrated on pragmatics, translation, feminist and film studies, and few people have focused their study from the perspective of systemic functional grammar.Taking the major dialogues among the three main characters as the data resource, this study aims to reveal the interpersonal meaning in Emma within the framework of systemic functional grammar theory. To be specific, the study attempts to explore the interpersonal meaning of the novel from the mood and modality perspective with the qualitative and quantitative approaches.Through the analysis, the major findings can be drawn as follows.(1) In the selected typical dialogues, the mood and modality resources are very rich, and their distributive features are obviously different in different stages of the story development. In terms of mood, Emma employs 59 clauses and 42 declarative sentences to express her opinions and provide information respectively in the first stage of story development. Moreover, she uses the first personal pronoun “I” as many as 30 times. As for the use of the Finite, the frequently used tense for her is the present tense, and the number is 40. However, in the second and third stages, Emma only articulates 30 clauses, and she uses 8 interrogative sentences to obtain information from Harriet and Knightley. In this part, Harriet and Knightley use 52 clauses and 37 declarative sentences compared with Emma. In addition, they use the first personal pronoun “I” 42 times to express their viewpoints, and Emma only uses it 17 times. In terms of modality, Emma uses 27 modal operators of medium and high value to express her confidence in her judgment in the earlier stage of the story, while she only uses 7 in the later part. Compared with Emma, Harriet and Knightley use 45 modal operators to express their opinions and attitude in this part. What's more, Emma uses 5 explicit subjective modality metaphorical sentences to highlight her viewpoints in the earlier stages, while she only utters 2 in the later stage.(2) By analyzing the distributive features of the interpersonal resources, the characteristics of different characters and their personal relations can be obtained. From their different utterances, it can be seen that Emma is a confident, affirmative and clever girl, while Harriet is a dependent and innocent girl. What's more, Knightley is a gentle and sensible man. When it comes to the personal relationship, Emma is always playing a dominant role in her conversation with Harriet, while Knightley is equal with Emma and he can always directly point out Emma's mistakes as an old friend.(3) By the analysis and comparison of interpersonal resources in different stages, the changes of their personalities and personal relations can be seen clearly in these stages. The use of less affirmative words reflects that Emma has become more sensible and self-conscious than ever before. Harriet uses the first personal pronoun “I” more frequently to express her views and attitude. From the features of her utterance, it indicates that she has become more confident than before. In the conversation between Emma and Harriet, Harriet uses more declarative sentences to provide information, which shows that the relationship between them has changed. Moreover, Emma uses few modal operators and explicit subjective modality metaphorical expressions in her conversation with Knightley, which reveals that she has really realized her own mistakes.Through the study of the interpersonal meaning in the novel Emma, this study further testifies the feasibility of systemic functional grammar theory in the analysis of literary discourse. Besides, the study can provide a new perspective for the reader to appreciate the novel.