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A Study on Interpersonal Meaning of Modality System in English Academic Writings

Author: GuoYuanYuan
Tutor: YangYuChen
School: Northeast Normal University
Course: Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
Keywords: Modality Interpersonal Meaning English Academic Writings SFG Theses Introductions
CLC: H315
Type: Master's thesis
Year: 2011
Downloads: 104
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Abstract

With the development of international communication, more and more foreign periodical begin to publish English dissertations. Therefore, English has become a popular language in the present academic circle. Meanwhile, it has become an imperative selection for the scholars in the world to write articles in English and publish them in international journals so as to make their research understood by others.Modality is a frequent phenomenon in English academic writings, which is one of the major realizations of interpersonal meaning. According to SFG, interpersonal meaning refers to the interaction between the writers and the target readers. That is to say, the writers try to have a great influence on the behavior and attitude of the readers’by means of modality. Therefore, it’s requisite for us to have a better understanding of the function and importance of modality so as to figure out the writers’information and improve our teaching and writing of English academic writings. However, there are not enough researches on the whole modality system until now, combining modality with the text in virtue of corpus.So the author attempts to make a detailed investigation on English academic writings within the framework of SFG on the basis of the samples of theses introductions written by Chinese postgraduates, who are majoring in foreign linguistics. It mainly studies the modality system from the perspective of type, value, orientation and polarity in order to find the special features of modality in English academic writings. Based on the research, the author finds out that modalization expression is preferred in English academic writings; in the value perspective, modal expressions with median value take the predominant position; implicit subjective expressions are adopted to achieve orientation; positive expressions are more than negative ones. All of this will make a little contribution to Chinese teaching and writing and the students’language awareness.

A Study on Interpersonal Meaning of Modality System in English Academic Writings

Abstract

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