A Diachronic Study Of Interpersonal Meaning In Chinese Political Speech On Ecological Environment From The Perspective Of Modality System

Political speeches are speeches delivered to elaborate political views and talk about political issues,having rich interpersonal meaning.Modality,as an important way to express interpersonal meaning,is richly used in political speeches.In recent years,global environmental problems have become increasingly prominent,China has actively involved in international discussions related to ecological environment issues,and its political speeches delivered in diplomatic settings implicitly convey its attitude.However,previous studies on the interpersonal meaning of modality are mostly synchronic and there are fewer diachronic studies.Therefore,it is of practical significance to analyze the interpersonal meaning of modality resources in Chinese political speeches on the ecological environment diachronically.Based on Halliday’s modality system of systemic functional grammar,this paper selects Chinese political speeches on ecological issues as corpus.With the help of corpus tools the corpus is annotated,and then quantitatively analyzes the proportion of modality in Chinese political speeches concerning the ecological environment,and qualitatively analyzes the interpersonal meaning and attitude of China of political speeches in different historical stages.The following three aspects were explored:(1)What are the distributions of modality in China’s political speeches concerning the ecological environment in various historical stages?(2)In different historical stages,what interpersonal meaning is conveyed through modality resources?(3)Through the diachronic analysis of interpersonal meaning,what kind of attitude of China towards the ecological environment is reflected,and how has it changed?The findings are as follows: firstly,in terms of the linguistic realizations of modality,modal operators are most frequently used and modal adjuncts rank the last,reflecting the seriousness of political speech.In terms of the types of modality,the obligation modality was used the most,followed by the inclination and the probability,and the usuality modality ranks last.In terms of the value of the modality,Chinese political speeches on the ecological environment mainly uses medium-value,followed by high-value and finally low-value modalities,indicating that the speakers try to make their views more acceptable to the audience.Secondly,when it comes to the interpersonal meanings reflected in the different historical stages.The interpersonal meanings of the inclination and usuality modality in the four periods are consistent,expressing China’s willingness to actively participate in eco-environmental cooperation and its position of supporting eco-environmental governance.The interpersonal meaning of the probability modality is mainly realized to express expectations and predict possible consequences;the interpersonal meaning of the obligation is realized to indicate responsibilities and fulfill its responsibility,and the obligation modalities of four historic stages are not consistent,demonstrating the changes in China’s perception of the responsible subjects for ecological and environmental issues.Finally,through the analysis of modality resources and interpersonal meaning,China presents the attitude of actively participating in international environmental cooperation,actively facing the challenges of ecological and environmental problems.It is hoped that this paper will be helpful to reveal the attitudes embodied in China’s ecological and environmental political speeches and provide readers with a powerful reference for understanding China’s ecological and environmental discourse in different historical stages.