A Contrastive Study Of Interpersonal Meaning In Chinese And English Recruitment Advertisement--Systemic Functional Approach

Language is used by people not only to describe the world around them, but also to express their viewpoints and to elicit or change others’opinions and behavior, as well as to interact with each other in order to establish and maintain relations with them. This function is termed as interpersonal meaning. Influenced by linguistic and cultural factors, the strategies of realizing interpersonal meaning may vary in texts in different languages. As a significant medium in the recruitment process, recruitment advertisements deserve our efforts to explore. This thesis then sets out to make a contrastive study of interpersonal meaning in a corpus of Chinese and English recruitment advertisements based on the theoretical framework combining Halliday’s systemic functional grammar with Martin’s appraisal theory. Fifteen authentic Chinese and English recruitment advertisements are selected from the companies’official websites respectively. Under Halliday’s framework, Mood, Modality and personal pronoun system in recruitment advertisements will be scrutinized. Besides, analysis will be conducted from the perspective of Attitude, Engagement and Graduation under Martin’s framework. Through the qualitive and quantitive analysis, it is aimed to find out how interpersonal meaning is realized under different social and cultural backgrounds.The tenor of recruitment advertisements includes the personal tenor and the functional tenor. The former is to provide information about the employer and job vacancies and the requirements for the applicants of those positions; the latter is the writer’s intention of persuading readers to apply for the positions. The analysis reveals that the writers of Chinese and English recruitment advertisements skillfully deploy various linguistic resources to realize the interpersonal meaning of the recruitment advertisements. They share many similarities, yet differences between them do exist in realizing of interpersonal meaning. Similarities can be seen from their preference to declarative Moods, a large number of modal expressions, high frequency of Judgment and Appreciation, wide use of force-rising etc. Disparities between them are outstanding from five aspects. (1) More interrogatives and imperatives are used in English recruitment advertisements (hereafter short for ERAs), whereas more exclamatives are deployed in Chinese recruitment advertisements (hereafter short for CRAs). (2) Modal expressions are employed in a large number by ERAs, and action demanding is expressed in a tactful way instead of obligation resource, whereas CRAs tend to use obligation modal expressions more frequently, which make the tone sound pushy. (3) ERAs show much more preference to the use of person pronoun system, which serves to enhance the interactive atmosphere. CRAs tend to employ proper names, i.e. the companies’names. Besides, ERAs use more times and types of person pronoun than CRAs do. (4) CRAs show their preference to the non-authorial Affect, while authorial Affect is the like of ERAs. (5) CRAs tend to be dialogically contracted, while ERAs are inclined to be dialogically expanded. In the sixth level, no apparent disparity is found in Graduation.Based on the analysis of the six levels, there are great disparities in interpersonal meaning between Chinese and English recruitment advertisements. The interaction of English recruitment advertisements is more dialogically expanded, and the writers have established a better relationship with the potential applicants. As a result, the negotiation between the writer and the readers of English recruitment advertisements are more effective. Chinese recruitment advertisements can learn the strategies of effectively conveying interpersonal meaning from English recruitment advertisements.