Interpersonal Meanings In The Oprah Winfrey Show From The Perspective Of Functional Grammar

Systemic functional linguistics is a theory of a British linguist Halliday,mainly studying the function and meaning of language.The Oprah Winfrey Show is greatly influential in the American history,and is the most successful talk show program.Studying its interpersonal meanings is helpful to talk show producers and hosts to employ the strategy to attract guests and audiences,and is expected to achieve a big success.Viewing that domestic and overseas studies on The Oprah Winfrey Show by using interpersonal function is still scarce,this research project attempted to explore the interpersonal meanings in one of the Oprah's typical interview with the Obamas in October,18 th,2006,with the assistance of a linguistic computer software UAM Corpus Tool,and the method of qualitative descriptive analysis.This thesis is aimed to reveal the realization of interpersonal meanings through different dimensions in the mood and modality systems.Through the investigation of different mood and modality elements into the interview,this study found that the majority of clauses are declaratives,used to clarify the linguistic contexts and represent personal ideas,especially when Obama answers the questions raised by Oprah;modalization is more frequently used than modulation to soften the tone,employed toreduce taking the corresponding responsibilities and maintain the smooth interpersonal relationships;and interrogative clauses are occasionally used to give information and declarative clauses to demand information by the host and guests,which are used to suggest the special occupational relationships between the host and guests;and a number of low and median value words are employed by the Obamas,making sure the validity of their utterances and reduce political sensitivity and unnecessary troubles;and the subjective implicit modality is most commonly used,which not only enables Oprah and the Obamas to express their own subjective views joyfully,but also allows them to avoid taking the bad consequences of the directness and committing themselves to sensitive topics brought up in the relatively informal talk show.This is particularly typical of Obama,Senator of Illinois State.In contrast,subjective explicit modality is seldom used.Therefore,appropriate uses of mood and modality systems by the host and guests are conducive to express their own views objectively and fairly,and maintain harmonious interpersonal relationships between them as well as with the audiences.This interpersonal functional analysis suggests that all the participants(Oprah and her guests)adopt proper approaches to getting their ideas across,while entertaining and engaging their audiences to produce a successful talk show.Yet,despite the strong explaining power of interpersonal function to account for the success of this talk show,the complexity of talk show exceeds the theoretical capacity of Systemic Functional Grammar(SFG),in that the success of a talk show rests principally on its substantive information related to the guests rather than the linguistic skills employed by its host and guests.In short,for one thing,this thesis provides a new angle for the analysis of the TV talk show;for the other,the findings of the research have crucial referential values and significance in improving the credibility and interestingness of talk shows.The exploration of the interpersonal meanings in the talk show programs substantially reveals interpersonal functional subsystems involved in the major participants' languages,but multi-dimensional approaches are needed to explain the success of The Oprah Winfrey Show.