The Realization of the Interpersonal Function in Emma Watson's Plea for Gender Equality Speech

The Realization of the Interpersonal Function in Emma Watson's Plea for Gender Equality Speech内容摘要：

The Realization of the Interpersonal Function in Emma Watson's Plea for Gender Equality Speech Лю Лэлэ, Чэнь Хайцин (Далянь, КНР) Abstract: This thesis uses the interpersonal function theory of Halliday to analyze Emma Watson’s plea for gender equality speech. By selecting and analyzing mood and modality, the author finds out how the interpersonal function realizes in the speech, so as to reveal the relationship between the interpersonal expressive devices the speaker has chosen and the meaning the speaker wants to express, aiming to help the audience grasp the real intention of the speaker. Key words: Gender Equality; Interpersonal Function; Mood; Modality 1.0 Introduction Gender inequality has been a long-standing historical and global problem. For several decades, all the world has advocated gender equality, but the situation seems not to change much. Fortunately, the practice of feminism movement has never stopped. "He For She" is one of the most important movements for gender equality and the first campaign of its kind at the UN. Emma Watson, as a goodwill ambassador for the Women's Department made the speech held for "He For She" movement at the UN. The speech is aimed to let the males know that the issue of gender equality is also associated with their own, calling for their support for feminism and helping to eliminate gender inequality. Historically, speeches about gender equality are slim and studies on such speeches are accordingly not much. Besides, linguistic researchers study public speech from different angles, such as stylistics, rhetoric, cognitive linguistics, pedagogics, while the studies from SFG (systemic functional grammar) are least. Therefore, the study of this speech about gender equality is necessary and the thesis combines the theory of interpersonal function with qualitative and quantitative methods to reflect how the speaker establishes a friendly relationship with the audience and how the speaker’s real purpose is realized in the speech. 2.0 The Interpersonal Function Realized in the Speech Halliday's systemic functional grammar is often used to analyze discourses. In his book An Introduction to Functional Grammar, Halliday makes clear that the purpose of the construction of Functional Grammar is to provide a theoretical framework for both spoken and written discourse analysis. He has divided the pure theory of systemic functional grammar into ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function. The interpersonal function is regarded by Halliday as exchange of information and mainly realized by mood and modality. 2.1 Mood in the Speech According to Halliday, in terms of role in exchange, the basic types of the speech role are giving and demanding, while the exchanged commodities are service and goods or information. Therefore, the exchanged roles and commodities can consist of four fundamental speech functions: offer, command, statement and question. Accordingly, they can be realized by different mood types: imperative mood, declarative mood and interrogative mood. In the persuasive speech, the speaker, on the one hand, provides certain information to the audience, showing his or her attitude and opinions; on the other hand, calls for the audience to take actions to support his or her claim. That is, the speaker should finish two speech functions---“to give information” and “to demand service” , which can be realized mainly by declarative mood. Mood types Table 1 Statistics on mood types in Emma’s speech declaratives interrogatives imperatives 77 (89.5%) 8 (9.3%) 1 (1.2%) From the table above, we can see declarative mood occupies the most. In the speech, Emma uses plenty of declaratives to convince men from three angles: firstly, feminism pursues the freedom for all males and females to realize the social justice and efficiency. Secondly, men should support feminism for the sake of women, or at least those whom they are most concerned about. Thirdly, men should support feminism just for themselves. 2.1.1 Declarative Mood At the beginning of the speech, Emma first helps people to eliminate misunderstandings to the word ‘feminism” and points out that feminism doesn’t refer to the statue of women's right, nor is it a privilege, but affirmative: that is, everyone has the equal rights to live, to be educated, to work, to choose, not to be bounded or concealed by the gender labels. Feminism pursues the equal opportunities and empowerment for each individual. That is “He for e