Chapter 2 Literature Review
Systemic-Functional Grammar regards discourse as language which is functional or metafunctional construct, which means speakers use language to describe various experiences of the real world and the interpersonal relationship are realized through consistent discourse during communication. Halliday identifies three metafunctions of language, which are at the same level and of the same importance. The first is the ideational function, using language to talk about our experience of the world. The second is the interpersonal function, using language to interact with other people. The third is the textual function, using language to organize our messages. This thesis will make use of Halliday's Systemic-Functional Grammar as a theoretical framework to explore the general realization of the interpersonal function in the English Political Speeches. This chapter mainly intends to give a general account of the influential theories on the interpersonal function based on different linguists' models as well as some influential theories related to English Political Speeches.
2.1 An Overview of Interpersonal Function
Functional linguists take the main responsibility to define the interpersonal function of language. From their viewpoints, interpersonal function refers to people use language to interact with other people to establish and maintain social and personal relations, to influence their attitudes and behaviors, to show personal opersonal on things in the world. Interpersonal function of language can also be termed as interpersonal meaning. However, as Li Zhanzi (2002) proposed, interpersonal function is not merely confined to the framework of functional grammar. It actually has been studied for a long time from different perspectives by various linguists.
As early as 1929, Bakhtin (1984) pointed out that meaning neither lies in the word or the soul of the speaker nor the listener, but the effect of interaction between speaker and listener produced via the material of a particular sound complex. Those words have realized the language function of both conveying meaning and interacting. It shows the elementary cognition of the interpersonal function.
Discourse analysts take much interest in interpersonal function and study it from a quite special perspective. They regard the discourse as dynamic rather than static and take account of all factors that may influence the organization of the discourse. They take notice of not only the purposes and functions of the discourses but also how the discourses are processed. The process includes both the way the receiver takes in the potential meaning of the producer and the way the producer organizes the message in consideration of the receiver on certain occasion. Discourse analysts put emphasis on this process and discuss it. Brown & Yule (1983, p. 24) claims it is ';an approach that takes the interpersonal function of language as its primary area of investigation and consequently seeks to describe a linguistic form, not as a static object, but as a dynamic means of expressing intended meaning\aspects of the composition of a discourse, but it has the vital deficiency of neglecting the grammatical demonstration which may result in the over subjective judgment of the receiver.
Pragmatic linguists pay great attention on the social status, age and sex of the speaker and the hearer in the context of situation. Pragmatics is even regarded as the discipline studying linguistic interaction between 'I' and 'you' \the politeness principle, which is inherently interpersonal-oriented. According to this theory, people are trying to save each other 's face when they are engaged in speech acts, which is
\constantly attended to in interaction\& Levinson, 1978, p. 66). Though pragmatic linguists' viewpoint on interpersonal function can enlighten the analysis on textual level, it has the deficiency of neglecting grammatical structure, either.
Besides what has been discussed above, there are still some other voices making researches on the interpersonal function of language. However. their deficiency is common, that is neglecting the grammatical structures of the text and lacking a standard to scale the different degrees of interpersonal function on different occasions. Nevertheless. the Systemic-Functional Grammar is able to solve the problem by connecting the grammatical structures to the meaning or function of language, and it.will be mainly employed in the present study. Meanwhile, some merits of the mentioned study on interpersonal function can also be incorporated. The following section will review some other influential models of interpersonal function from the functional grammar perspective into particulars.
2.2 Influential Models of Interpersonal Function
This part will present four influential modals of interpersonal function studied by functional linguists.
2.2.1Halliday's Model of Interpersonal Function
According to Halliday's conceptual framework of Systemic-Functional Grammar, language is viewed as a semiotic system. This system is sustained by a network of interrelated and mufii-layered systems of options in meaning. In this sense, text is a semantic entity, which is a functional configuration of choice of meaning. Thus a discourse grammar indeed should be functional and semantic in its orientation, with the grammatical structures explained as the realization of semantic patterns. In Systemic-Functional Grammar, function equals meaning (Halliday, 2000).
Halliday puts forward three metafunctions of language including the ideational metafunction, the interpersonal metafunction, and the textual metafunction by observing children's acquisition of language. He points out the three metafunctions are at the same level and of the same importance. Halliday (1994) interprets the three metafunctions as followed: ideational metafunction means using language to describe our experience of the world; the interpersonal metafunction enables people to interact with other people; and the textual metafunction refers to use language to organize our messages.
In daily life, people communicate with each other by using language to talk about the world around them, along with which they are interacting with each other, and thus establish and maintain certain social relationships between them. People describe the world in their own eyes and in a very personal way which cannot be the a hundred percent reflection of the real world. Thus the speaker's viewpoints on things inevitably make subjective attitudes and judgments but they are trying to influence.
and change others viewpoints about certain things. Such is the interpersonal function. Therefore, interpersonal function represents the speaker's meaning potential as an intruder, carrying a heavy semantic load. It encompasses the dynamics of the relationship between the speaker and the hearer, and the use of language to express one's attitude and to influence the attitudes or behavior of the hearer (Halliday, 1985).
According to Halliday, the clause is organized as an interactive event involving speaker or writer, and audience. Halliday (1985) proposes that the interpersonal function carries a heavy
semantic load and he focuses on mood and modality as the main lexico-grammatical systems to realize the interpersonal function. He mentions the existence of other means of interpersonal function, namely, in the person system, in the attitudinal type of epithet, in the connotative meanings of lexical items, in prosodic features such as swearing words and voice quality (Halliday, 1994, p. 191). Halliday does realize the other resources of the interpersonal function, but he does not mention them in a detailed way. The model of Halliday's interpersonal function shows that mood and modality are in a parallel position, but the evaluation system is mentioned only marginally as realized by comment adjuncts. The following figure is the summary of Halliday's model of interpersonal function.
Interpersonal-mood Modalization
Modality interpersonal Modulation interpersonal
(evaluative devices)
Figure 2.1 Halliday's Model of Interpersonal System
Though Halliday pays great attention on meaning, he does not neglect the form of language. A1l three functions are located both at the level of semantics and grammar. He proposes that these three kinds of functions can be realized by linguistic units of all kinds: word, word group, prepositional phrase, clause, clause complex and text, which are related both before the contextual variables and after lexico-grammar (Halliday, 2003, p. 110).The lexico-granunatical resources to realize interpersonal function are those of mood and modality, intensification and other evaluation devices realized prosodic ally throughout the text. Besides these three main factors, Halliday also mentioned that interpersonal function can also be realized by the person system, the attitudinal type of epithet, the connotative meanings of lexical items functioning in the group and in prosodic features such as swear-words and voice quality (Halliday, 2000, p. 191). This thesis mainly adopts Halliday's model of interpersonal' function on Iexico-grammatical level in Systemic-Functional Grammar as the framework from perspectives of mood and modality systems to analyze the realization of interpersonal function in the English Political Speeches. 2.2.2 Thompson's Model of Interpersonal Function
As one of Halliday's supporters, Thompson also did research on the interpersonal function and furthered Halliday's study and made some achievements. Since mood concerns the social role the speaker has taken and assigns roles to reader and writer, while modality which involves the writer's own judgments and attitudes and its relation with the interpersonal element seems to put emphasis on the personal\Thompson (1996) tries to make the extension of the interpersonal system to consummate the theory. He adds personal function which consists of modality and evaluation and interactive function which is composed of the enacted roles and projected roles into the previous interpersonal system. These two functions are related but relatively independent. Compared with Halliday, Thompson has made two modifications in the original framework. On one hand, he introduces the term of \great attention on evaluation.
As for evaluation, Thompson explicitly pointes out that in discussing evaluation, we have
moved from strictly grammatical issues towards areas, which are more difficult to pin down in structural terms. The evaluation is a central part of the meaning of any text and any analysis of the interpersonal function of a text must take it into account. There are many scales of evaluations and it is revealing to see what.kinds of values are established in any particular genre. He also claims that evaluation does not have structures of its own: it is parasitic on other structural elements. Thompson also mentions the interaction and the negotiation of the text. Thompson has developed the interpersonal management into two aspects: personal (modality and evaluation) and interactive (enacted roles or projected roles). His interpersonal model can be graphically summarized in the following figure:
Modality
Personal Evaluation
interpersonal Enacted(speech roles) interpersonal
Projected roles
Figure 2.2 Thompson's Model of Interpersonal System
2.2.3 Martoin's Model of Interpersonal Function
In 1992, Martin points out that although Halliday focuses the grammar as a functionally organized meaning making resource (rather than as a syntax, or sets of forms), no attempt is made to distinguish stately between grammar and meaning; rather the grammar is infused with meaning, and a strata distinction between grammar and semantics systematically blurred (Martin, 1992, p. 31). So Martin (1992) unpicks boundary between grammar and semantics in a systemic functional interpretation of language. His main improvements include: interpreting mood from a discourse perspective as a resource for negotiating meaning in dialogue; outlining a model in which speech function (discourse semantics) has been stratified with respect to mood on the content plane and discussing the moves and acts models which enrich the functional interpersonal meaning greatly.
Martin's another contribution to interpersonal function is the appraisal system. He extends and systematically classifies the \only been mentioned by Halliday. Appraisal is concerned with evaluation---attitude that has to do with evaluating things, people's character and their feelings. The evaluation can be more or less intense, that is, they may be more or less amplified; they may be the writer's own or it may be attributed to some other
sources. But Martin's focus is only on the lexical level.
Following Halliday's approach, Martin develops the appraisal resources as a basis for exploring how and why interlocutors engage in appraisal in a number of extracts from spoken and written texts. Unlike the traditional background of taking interpersonal discourse semantics grammatically, Martin does a complementary work for the interpersonal system and locates the appraisal system at the level of discourse semantics. Martin has done a lot on the appraisal system, but he does not do much on the involvement system. His model of the interpersonal system can be summarized as the following: negotiation
Engagement
interpersonal Appraisal Attitude(affect, judgment, appreciation
involvement
Graduation
Figure 2.3 Martin's Model of lnterpersonal System
2.2.4 Li Zhanzi's Expanded Model of Interpersonal Function
Halliday's functional grammar examines interpersonal function mainly at the clausal level, but some of the devices to realize the interpersonal function are not at the clausal level; and evaluation, which is an important aspect of interpersonal system, is only mentioned marginally. Based on the above mentioned inadequacies, F. R. Palmer has done specific research on the mood and modality. According to Palmer (2007), mood, together with modal system, contributes to a grammatically overall category of modality. Palmer has suggested that \either epistemic or evidential. Li Zhanzi made some modifications and improvements on Palmer's model of interpersonal system. She states that the interpersonal function encompasses the dynamics of the relationship between writer and reader and the use of language to express one's attitude, and to influence the attitude or the behavior of the hearer/reader (Li Zhanzi, 1999, p. 37). Li Zhanzi (2001) claims that interpersonal function should be broadened from lexico-grammatical level to discourse level, using texts rather than sentences as the data. Li Zhanzi has made some adjustments and established a two-level model.
Table 2.1 Li Zhanzi's Expanded Model of lnterpersonal System Discourse-based two-level model of interpersonal system Level Micro-social(writer-reader) Epistemic Evaluative Interactive Aspect Macro-social (multi-voices in discourse-reader) Evaluative Li Zhanzi studies the realization of interpersonal function at the discourse level and pays much attention to the tense, personal pronoun, and direct discourse as well as reflexive expressions, which expands the scope of the interpersonal system while former scholars seldom make detail studies.
Besides the four influential models of the interpersonal function study mentioned above, there are also some other researches on interpersonal function from different aspects and in different discourses, all of which have broadened the range of study and enlightened the later research on the interpersonal aspect. 2.3 Reviews on Mood and Modality
Mood and Modality are two main ways to realize the interpersonal function in the discourse. In the following part, from Halliday's systemic-functional perspective, mood and modality will be studied in details
2.3.1 Interpersonal Function on Mood System
In functional linguistics, mood refers to a set of related opinions, which gives structure to the speech situation and defines the relations between speaker and listeners in a linguistic interaction. According to Halliday, the mood' element is the component that realizes the mood types of the clause which are closely related with the semantic choice of speech functions. From Halliday's viewpoint, the mood system can be divided into three types, namely, indicative mood, imperative mood and interrogative mood.
2.3.1.1 Speech Roles and Functions
The interpersonal function of mood is closely connected with speech role. Halliday (1994) points out whenever we use language to interact, one of the things we are doing is to establish a