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1、Metafunction In Interpretive Framework中山大学外国语学院2002级研究生 As we all know, communication is inherently two-way. We use our language to interact with other people and to exchange meanings with other people. Apart from these functions, we also use it to talk about the world, either the external world, th
2、ings, events, qualities, etc, or our internal world, thoughts, beliefs, feelings, etc. The discourse of men and women forms two systems which are in many ways distinct from each other, although they grow up in the same families, they are educated together, they form families together, and they work
3、together in the same companies and offices. As we will see, in many situations, men and women are involved in a miscommunication. Therefore, what I am going to do in the following paragraphs is to illustrate how men and women come to misinterpret each other, even when they approach communication wit
4、h the best of intentions. We will start with analysis of a common example from the perspective of functional grammar in order to see how people use language to express their ideas. The conversation below is not at all unusual. He: What would you like for your birthday? She: I do not care, anything i
5、s ok. He: No, really, what do you want? Id like to get you something nice. She: You dont have to get me anything, besides we cant afford much right now. He: Well, how about if we just go out for dinner together then? She: Sure, thats fine. I dont really want anything. You always give me whatever I w
6、ant anyway. Obviously, this is a conversation between husband and wife about buying a birthday gift. From the perspective of interpersonal metafunction, the whole clauses of the man “He” in this dialogue are interrogative. That is to say, he asks questions to demand some information. In wh-interroga
7、tives, finite is always preceding subject in the mood. In addition, the primary purpose of a wh-interrogative is to demand the listener to fill in a missing part of the message, and the wh-element signals which part is missing. For example, in this conversation the question “ what would you like for
8、 your birthday” can be seen as a demand for the woman to complete “ I would like -( gift expression)-”. And the finite “ would” is ahead of the subject “ you”, both of which consists of the mood. Besides, the man uses the word “ would” to express “ modality”, showing some kind of assessment of how l
9、ikely the event is to happenand at the same time the issue of politeness comes up. The word “ really” in the utterance of the man belongs to the category of modal adjunct in the functional grammar. More concretely, “ really” is a comment adjunct which comments on the clause as a whole, and is separa
10、ted off from the rest of the clause by commas. The word “ really” in the example above tells us the mans attitude towards the fact that he wants to get his wife something nice. And the word “nice” here refers more to the mans feelings about “something” that he will give to the woman as a birthday gi
11、ft. Without receiving some expected answer, the man has to decide to change his plan by suggesting to go out for a dinner. Further more, the adjunct “well” as well as the question “ how about-?” in his last claus signals the mans negotiation with the woman. After analyzing the mans utterance from th
12、e perspective of functional grammar, we can notice that the man does want to buy something she likes for her as a birthday gift, and does sincerely hope the woman to give him an accurate answer. Unfortunately, however, the exchange of information is not successful for the woman refuses to provide th
13、e information demanded (answers the question). Actually, men and women are often involved in a miscommunication, for they have different interpretive framework respectively. In the above example, in fact, both the man and the woman feel frustrated by this situation. The man really wants to give her
14、something nice and unusual. But from this conversation he is not able to figure out what she would like, and he gives up and settles for just going out for dinner. What has frustrated him is that while he has asked quite clearly and specifically what she wants, she has told him nothing. He may think
15、 that this woman and perhaps all women are indefinite, or unable to say clearly what they want. On the part of the woman, she would very much appreciate a special and unusual gift as a symbol of the strength of their relationship. What the gift would be is not the consideration for her at all. What
16、is important to her is that he should know her well enough to tell what kind of gifts is her favorite. Eventually, she may feel that he, like all men, is unobservant, or is unable to interpret her feelings. In fact, the woman has wanted to give him a chance to demonstrate his feelings to her, so she
17、 carefully disguises any clues that she is really hoping for a nice gift. She just hopes that in spite of this conversation he will go out and buy something for her. The man and the woman in this conversation have approached the same situation with very different interpretive frame, and so even thou
18、gh they have succeeded in producing a complete coherent, fluent discourse, they have not really understood each other at all. In this example, the man expects direct explicit statement, while the woman expects indirect expression. However, the point is difference in expectation, not absolute differe
19、nces in style or behavior. For instance, woman always complains that in some decade or more of marriage her husband has never told her that he loves her. The response many men make to this complaint is that they have worked hard at their jobs, they have been faithful husband, they have not wasted mo
20、ney on themselves for yearswhat clearer expression of their love could they make than years of demonstrating it through their day-to-day behavior? In this case, woman seems to ask for an explicit statement, whereas man makes an indirect statement through his actions. The research on intergender disc
21、ourse has shown that mainly four dimensions along which men and women tend to form different interpretive frames. Generally speaking, women are more concerned with intimacy, connection and inclusion, and they tend to focus more attention on the use of language as a way of communicating relationships
22、, namely, to establish and maintain appropriate social links with other people. Men, on the other hand, because of their focus on independence, status, and exclusion, will favor the informational functioning of language, namely, to exchange meanings with others. In conclusion, all of us are the prod
23、ucts of our histories and socializations. For both men and women, their sense of identity and their sense of place in culture and society are tied up in the ideological history of relationships between men and women. And these interpretive frameworks are the marks of effects that the culture and society we are living in have given to us. Cuckoo
