VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES
************ TRẦN THỊ BÍCH NGỌC INTERPERSONAL MEANING IN ENGLISH AND
VIETNAMESE JOB ADVERTISEMENTS: A SYSTEMIC-
FUNCTIONAL COMPARISON NGHĨA LIÊN NHÂN TRONG QUẢNG CÁO TUYỂN DỤNG
TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT: SO SÁNH TRÊN QUAN ĐIỂM
CHỨC NĂNG HỆ THỐNG

MA MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Linguistics
Code: 60 22 02 01
Hanoi, 2014 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

Vietnamese Job Advertisements: A Systemic-Functional Comparison” is entirely the
result of my own research unless otherwise referenced or acknowledged. The thesis
has not been submitted for degree at any other academic institution.

Hanoi, January 2014 Tran Thi Bich Ngoc ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This thesis could not have been achieved without the advice, encouragement and
support from my instructors, colleagues, classmates and my family.
First and foremost, I would particularly like to express my deepest gratitude to my
supervisor, Prof. Hoang Van Van for his invaluable guidance, criticism and his
encouragement throughout my research.
My special thanks go to all instructors and the staff of the Faculty of Post-Graduate
Studies, University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National
University, Hanoi for their useful lectures and assistance during my study.
I am also very grateful to my colleagues, my friends and classmates at University of
Languages and International Studies for their precious support and sincere
comments.
Last but not least, I would like to acknowledge my debt to my beloved family who
have given me unconditioned love and encouragement, which is very significant for
me to fulfill this work.
iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS
DECLARATION…………………………………………………………………i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii
ABSTRACT iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS iv
LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES vi
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vii

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1
1.1. Rationale of the study 1
1.2. Significance of the study 2
1.3. Aims of the study and research questions 2
1.4. Methodology 2
1.5. Design of the study 4

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 5
CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 5
1.1. An investigation into interpersonal meaning 5
1.1.1. Mood 6
1.1.2. Modality 9
1.1.3. The person system 12
1.2. Tenor of job advertisements 13
1.2.1. Context of situation 13
1.2.2. Tenor: the interpersonal variable of the context of situation 14
1.2.3. Tenor of job advertisements 15

vi

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1.1 Speech functions and commodities exchanged ………………6
Table 1.2 Speech functions and typical mood of clause 6
Table 1.3 Modalization and modulation 10
Table 1.4 Modal operators 11
Table 1.5 Modality: examples of ―type‖ and orientation combined 11
Table 2.1 Distribution and frequency of mood structures in the samples of
English job advertisements 17
Table 2.2 Distribution and frequency of mood structures in the samples of
Vietnamese job advertisements 17
Table 2.3 Distribution and frequency of probability in English and Vietnamese
job advertisements 26
Table 2.4 Distribution and frequency of obligation in English and Vietnamese
job advertisements. 30
Table 2.5 Distribution and frequency of modality in English and Vietnamese
job advertisements 33
Table 2.6 Distribution and frequency of the person system in English and
Vietnamese job advertisements 35 LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1.1 The power continuum 4
Figure 1.2 The contact continuum 14
Figure 1.3 The affective involvement continuum 14
vii
1. Rationale of the study
Not only is language used to represent the interlocutors’ experience of the world
around them, but also to express interpersonal meaning, the function language used to
interact with other people in order to establish and maintain the relationship between
them as well as to reflect the writer’s attitude towards the subject matter (Halliday,
1994). Since language is an effective means of communication, interpersonal meaning
is an indispensable component among the three meta-functions in Halliday’s Systemic
Functional Grammar (SFG).
Interpersonal meaning has recently become a matter of great concern among
researchers. Until now, there have been a considerable number of studies on
interpersonal meaning of different types of discourses on the basis of SFG ranging
from political speeches, fundraisings to advertisements. Among all these discourses,
advertising is the most contacted in our current society. Within the field of
advertisements, there are studies on interpersonal meaning in advertising in general
or particularly in different types of advertisements. A distinctive example of the study
on interpersonal meaning in English advertising is the research by Xiao-xia (2008).
It was found that advertisers employ the mood systems and person system to create
an intimate atmosphere, thus enhancing the interactivity and trustworthiness.
Different kinds of advertisements have also been studied in recent years like the
study on hotel and apartment advertisements by Sinaga (2012) or political
advertisements in some Nigerian newspapers by Olusanya (2013).
As a sub-category of advertisements, job advertisements belong to the persuasive
genre with the aim of establishing the relationship between the recruiters and potential
applicants; therefore, they contribute as a fruitful source for researchers to carry out
studies on interpersonal meaning. However, it is revealed that most research mainly
focused on English recruitment advertising discourse like studies by Yan & Li (2007)
and Liang (2009). Those on Vietnamese job advertisements are seldom found not to
mention the comparative study on interpersonal meaning in English and Vietnamese
2



advertisements in the two languages, a corpus of fifteen English and fifteen
Vietnamese advertisement texts were collected. The Vietnamese data were selected
from www.vietnamworks.com, the top recruitment website in Vietnam. Likewise,
the English corpus was chosen from www.monster.com , one of the largest and most
reliable professional recruiting website in America. All of the thirty job
advertisements are listed in Appendices 1 and 2. In the process of data collection, to
avoid the limitation of singularity in one field, the author tried to concern as many
domains as possible, such as accounting, education, banking, constructing, tourism,
and so forth. For the sake of convenience, the letter E followed by a number of data
ranging from 1 to 15 refers to the English job advertisements while the letter V to
the Vietnamese job advertisements. The main subject of this research is the written
discourse of job advertisement; therefore, the titles, slogans and image of the
company are not taken into consideration.
The present research aims to investigate the realization of interpersonal
meaning in the discourse of job advertisements in English and Vietnamese from the
perspective of systemic functional grammar. Therefore, this study brings in the
Hallidayian Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) model of text analysis as the
theoretical framework for the analysis and comparison of the job advertisement
texts. According to Halliday (1994), the mood and modality systems are the basic
means to realize interpersonal meaning lexico-grammatically in the clause. Later,
pronoun system, attitudinal modifier and rhythmic features of word are also added.
The researcher made a critical view of the previous studies of interpersonal meaning
and intended to analyze the realization of interpersonal meaning from three aspects:
mood, modality, and the person system.
The analytical procedure is made up of three steps. First, the representations of
mood, modality and person system in English and Vietnamese job advertisements
were identified. Second, the frequencies of the above-mentioned expressions in
English and Vietnamese corpus were counted respectively, and then the figures
were listed in a table to show similarities and differences between English and

PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

As the title suggests, this study applies the theory of Systemic Functional
Grammar (SFG) to the analysis of interpersonal meaning in the discourse of job
advertisements in English and Vietnamese. To set the framework for analysis, this
chapter provides a review of the interpersonal meaning as conceptualized in SFG. In
the first place, the notion of interpersonal meaning will be examined. This will be
followed by an account of tenor of job advertisements.
1.1. An investigation into interpersonal meaning
Halliday and Matthiesen (2004), as cited in Eggins (2004: 144), state that
―whenever we use language to interact, one of the things we are doing with it is
establishing a relationship between us: between the person speaking now and the
person who will probably speak next.‖ At this point, grammar of interaction is seen
from a semantic perspective.
According to Matthiessen (1995), the interpersonal meaning is considered to
be ―a resource for enacting social roles and relationships between speaker/writer
and listener/reader.‖ (1995: 17)
Meanwhile, Thompson explains the interpersonal meaning as
―We use language to interact with other people, to establish and maintain
relations with them, to influence their behavior, to express our own viewpoints
on things in the world, and to elicit or change theirs.’’
(Thompson, 2004: 30)
In short, the most important task of the interpersonal meaning is to establish
and maintain a social relationship between participants. It relates to the text’s aspect
of tenor which combines three component areas: status, contact and affect.
Interpersonal meaning mainly concerns the roles of addressers and audience, mood
and modality.



Table 1.1 Speech functions and commodities exchanged (Halliday, 1994: 69)

1.1.1.2. Typical mood structures
The four basic speech functions are closely related with particular grammatical
structures. The relationship between forms of speech functions and typical mood
clauses is illustrated in Table 1.2 as follows:
Speech function
Typical mood in clause
Command
―imperative mood‖
Close the door.
Offer
―modulated interrogative mood‖
Would you like to have dinner with me?
Statement
―declarative mood‖
It was one of Shakespeare’s works.
Question
―interrogative mood‖
What are you going to do tonight?
Table 1.2 Speech functions and typical mood of clause (Adapted from Eggins, 2004: 148)
7

In the interpersonal meaning, a clause in English is analyzed into Mood and
Residue, with the mood element is made up of Subject and Finite. Subject ―supplies
the rest of what it takes to form a proposition, namely, something by reference
which the proposition can be affirmed or denied‖ (Halliday, 1994: 76). The Finite
aims to make the proposition finite and relates the proposition to the context in the
speech event. The Finite expressing tense and modality is part of a verbal group.

Subject
Predicator
Complement
Mood
Residue Wh-element conflated with Subject What
happened?
Subject/WH-
Finite
Predicator
Mood
Residue
8

WH-interrogative clause
Where
do
you
live?
Adjunct/WH-
Finite
Subject
Predicator

Mood

you
borrow
her book!

Subject
Predicator

Finite
Subject
Predicator
Complement

Mood
Residue

Mood
Residue

Halliday and Matthiesen (2004) assert that the Mood element comprising
Subject and Finite is the element that realizes the selection of mood in the clause. It
is worth noting, here, that Halliday and Matthiesen (2004) also make a note of the
different realizations of mood under different social and cultural contexts.
According to them, the sequence of Subject and Finite serving to realize the
selection of mood in the clause is ―being restricted mainly to certain languages from
Europe. It is far more common for languages to use tone (as English also does)
and/or special interpersonal mood particles as in languages in East and South-East
Asia (as in Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese and Thai)‖ (Halliday and Matthiesen
(2004:113). These mood particles tend to come at the beginning or at the end of the
clause and serve the interpersonal function of Negotiator.
For example, in Vietnamese yes-no interrogative clause, there does not appear

Mood
Residue
Mood 1.1.1.3. Grammatical metaphors of mood
Thompson (2000) states that the expression of meaning can be achieved
through a lexico-grammatical form which originally evolved to express a different
kind of meaning. Compared with the typical mood structures as discussed above,
the four basic speech functions are also realized by less typical or non-typical
structures which are called grammatical metaphor of mood (Halliday, 1994). The
use of grammatical metaphor is much popular in people’s daily interaction. For
example, command is typically realized by imperative mood but can be expressed
by a large variety of expressions as illustrated below.
a. Show me the car!
b. Tell me where you parked the car, please.
c. Could you tell me where you parked the car, please?
d. I would advise you to tell me where you parked the car
e. It is advisable to tell me where you parked the car.
1.1.2. Modality
1.1.2.1. Definition and types of modality
Halliday (1994) asserts the importance of modality in carrying out the
interpersonal meaning of clauses. He states that the speaker through modality can
take up a position and show the status and the validity of the proposition. Modality
is a degree between the positive and negative poles reflecting the speaker’s
10

judgments. What the modality system does is to construe the region of uncertainty
that lies between ―yes‖ and ―no‖ (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004: 147).
Modality is classified differently according to different linguists. Palmer

They must have known
They certainly knew
They certainly must have
known
usuality
(sometimes
/usually
/always)
finite modal operator
modal Adjunct
(both the above)
It must happen
It always happen
It must always happen
modulation
obligation
(allowed
finite modal operator
passive verb Predicator
You must be patient!
You’re required to be patient!
11

/supposed
/required)
inclination
(willing
/keen
/determined)
finite modal operator

Interpersonal metaphor is also studied by Halliday (1994) as a means of
modality realization. Halliday (1994: 357) claims that it is modality orientation that
determines how each modality meaning gets expressed. The relationship between
different types of modality and orientation is shown in Table 1.5 below.

Subjective:
explicit
Subjective:
implicit
Objective:
implicit
Objective:
explicit
Modalization:
Probability
I think [in my
opinion] Mary
knows
Mary’ll know
Mary probably
knows[in all
probability]
It’s likely that
Mary knows
[Mary is likely to]
Modalization:
Usuality

Fred’ll sit
quite quiet

create the pragmatic function of modality in discourse.
1.1.3. The person system
The person system has been the subject of many scholars’ linguistic research
and studies. As a grammatical category, in traditional grammar, the person system is
a closed system concerned with the quantity and quality of participants in a specific
situation. That means personal pronouns are only discussed in terms of their form
and syntactic function. However, since the introduction of discourse analysis and
sociolinguistics in the 1980s, personal pronouns have been viewed from the
approach of social linguistics. According to Li (2001), their use is considered to be
important to the achievement of social function like exerting effects and expressing
politeness in recent studies. In SFG, Halliday (1994) states that the person system,
both as pronouns (person as Thing, e.g. she, you) and as possessives (person as
Deictic, e.g. her, your) can also be deployed to express the interpersonal meaning.
Personal pronouns can establish a certain relationship between the addressers
and the audience in a speech. According to Stephan & Patzold (1992), the selection
of personal pronouns (e.g. I, we, and you) can affect the degree of distance or
closeness between the writer/speaker and the reader/listener. In other words, certain
pronouns can present degrees of intimacy or authority. It may indicate the
addresser’s attempts to explicitly engage their audience or to invoke audience
participation. Not only do the addressers confirm their audience’s existence through
their selection of the person system but also express their attitudes towards their
listeners/readers and the relationship between the addressers and their audience. For
instance, the use of inclusive we can create a context in which there is an agreement
between the addresser and the listener and the addresser’s attempt to include his/her
audience in the group referred to. On the other hand, the exclusive we can be
deployed with the speaker’s intention to separate his role and the role of his
audience and establish the distance or authority.
13

Traditional grammar divides personal pronouns into first person (I, we),

variable of context of situation.
1.2.2. Tenor: the interpersonal variable of the context of situation
Tenor is the aspect of language that recognizes the presence (real or imagined)
of participants in interaction. According to Eggins & Slade (1997), tenor has three
important aspects including power, contact and affective.
First, language choices we make can be influenced by how much power we
feel we have in relation to the person we are interacting with. It is indicated that the
unequal status relation may decide the power. Therefore, we might issue a polite
request to our senior but make a command to a child.

Power
Equal Unequal
Figure 1.1 The power continuum

Second, interpersonal relationships also vary in terms of the length and the
frequency of our interactions with people. Contact can be characterized as voluntary
or involuntary, regular or intermittent. Thus, we are likely to use more casual
language with close friends or family members but tend to be more polite and less
forthcoming with a neighbor whom we occasionally see.

Contact
Frequent Occasional
Figure 1.2 The contact continuum

Third, affective involvement means we make language choices according to
how close we feel towards the people in our interaction. Affective involvement can
range from nil (distant, unattached) through some (e.g. classmates or colleagues) to
high (e.g. lovers or family members).

Affective involvement
16

CHAPTER 2
A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF INTERPERSONAL MEANING
IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE JOB ADVERTISEMENTS

This chapter will present a contrastive analysis of the realization of
interpersonal meaning in English and Vietnamese job advertisements based on the
SFG framework. An in-depth study of interpersonal meaning in the corpus is carried
out in terms of mood, modality and the person system. It is hoped that this detailed
analysis will shed light on how interpersonal meaning is realized in English and
Vietnamese job advertisements.
2.1. A contrastive analysis in terms of mood
2.1.1. Speech roles in job advertisements and mood structures
The functional tenor of job advertisements and possible mood structures that
could realize speech functions have been indicated in Chapter 1. Thus, this section
will present the speech roles in job advertisements and focus on the detailed
analysis of the specific mood structures that are employed in the samples.
It can be realized that there exist two main kinds of speech roles in job
advertisements: giving and demanding. On the one hand, the advertiser aims to
provide the readers with information about the nature of the recruiting company, the
vacancy, job duties, qualifications, the salary or benefits and the contact
information. On the other hand, the advertiser has an earnest desire to attract the
potential job hunters to apply for a certain vacancy. Since a job posting is
considered to serve a dual purpose, in the process of creating advertisements the