电视访谈中介入标记语的人际功能

系统功能语言学中的评价理论对说话人表达和协商特定的主体间关系以及意识形态的话语资源进行了归纳,旨在评价语言使用者如何运用话语资源表达赋值语义,解释语言如何用来评估、表示、构建语篇角色及调节人际关系.以评价理论中的介入次系统为出发点,结合巴赫金多声性观点以及语境,可以从主体间定位的角度审视在介入系统视角下,电视访谈这一语类中介入标记作为一种元话语的运作情况和人际功能.主持人面对不同的受访者和观众群,在访谈中通常采取不同的话语策略,利用介入标记进行意义协商.评价是话语人际意义的实现方式.介入标记语所体现的人际意义在交互中生成并受语境的制约,有助于协调主持人、受访人和电视观众之间的互动,促使访谈的成功.

Interpersonal Functions of Engagement Markers in TV interviews

The Appraisal System proposed by Martin and White is an extension of Hallidayan Systemic Functional Linguistics.It is a functional model of interpersonal meaning at the level of discourse semantics,aimed to explore,describe and explain the way language is used to evaluate,to adopt stances, to construct textual personas and to manage interpersonal relationships.The theory is concerned with the linguistic resources by which texts/speakers come to express,negotiate and naturalize particular inter-subjective and ultimately ideological positions.Within this broad scope,the theory focuses particularly on the language of evaluation,attitude and emotion.In the Appraisal System,evaluative resources are divided into three semantic domains,i.e.attitude,engagement and graduation.The engagement system is one of the options for expanding or contracting space for other voices in discourse,enabling an investigation of the dynamic management of other voices by the speaker/writer.In the engagement system,resources are dealt with for positioning the speaker's/author's voice with respect to the various propositions and proposals conveyed by a text.Engagement markers,a metadisocurse in nature,play an important role to achieve this purpose.In the past,studies of discourse markers have mainly focused on the marker's role of coherence in the text.Few attempts have been made to explore the semantics of evaluation these markers exhibit.On the other hand,the Appraisal System has so far analyzed the language of appraisal mainly from the perspective of lexis.The present study,starting from the engagement system,is an attempt to examine the interpersonal functions of engagement markers in the genre of TV intewiews.Within the engagement system framework,the engagement markers are divided into two groups: intra-vocalization group and extra-vocalization group.These markers are analyzed and discussed from the perspective of inter-subjective positioning with reference to context and Bakhtin's idea of dialogism and heteroglossia.The data are three interviews from the CCTV on the same topic and six people from different backgrounds joined in the talk.The analysis indicates that the TV host adopts different discourse strategies by making use of different engagement markers when interviewing people from different social backgrounds and when taking into account the target TV interviews.This represents an active communicative attitude.The interpersonal meaning realized by engagement markers is generated in interaction and constrained by context.Engagement markers play an important role in facilitating interaction between the TV host,interviewees and the TV audience at large and in making the interviews a success.Appraisal is a way to realize the interpersonal meaning of discourse.The concern in this study is with the meanings that are realized dynamically through a series of engagement markers in TV interviews.The research design is qualitative and interpretive in approach,aimed at an in-depth analysis of the engagement markers in three TV interviews.This approach complies with Martin's view of discourse analysis: what is unique about a specific text may be just what matters.