Snip-Snap: An Analysis of Interpersonal Meanings in a Political TV Interview

Abstract

This paper mainly employs Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar theory, concerning the interpersonal metafunction, to make a theoretically founded analysis on an episode in Feng Yun Dui Hua, a famous television program from Phoenix TV. The specific data is from an interview between the TV host Ruan Cishan and the contemporary US Secretary of State Colin Luther Powell. Through analysis of interpersonal meanings in the interview discourse, it is revealed that Mood, modality, person pronouns and Appraisal system are all important devices to reveal the features of the political TV interview