Contrastive Analysis of Interpersonal Metafunction in Chinese and English TED Talks

Abstract

As a form of knowledge dissemination aimed at the public, TED talks demonstrate a strong demand for interpersonal interaction within the framework of one-way output. This study, grounded in the interpersonal metafunction theory of Systemic Functional Linguistics, conducts a comparative analysis of TED talks in both Chinese and English versions. It focuses on three progressive levels-the Mood system, the Modality system, and the Appraisal system-examining the stance differentiation between Subject and Finite, the participatory mobilization of interrogative and imperative structures, the graduation features of modalization and modulation, and the attitudinal presentation of affect, judgement, and engagement resources. The results indicate that English talks rely more on explicit grammatical markers and clear graduation scales, with clear stance boundaries and stronger contraction of dialogic space; Chinese talks, on the other hand, convey interpersonal meaning through modal particles, subject ellipsis, and contextual inference, exhibiting higher stance fluidity and more inclusive and mitigating engagement strategies. The differences between the two languages in interpersonal metafunctional encoding are not a matter of superiority or inferiority, but rather different realization paths of their respective linguistic systems and cultural conventions under the same communicative goal.