Analysis of interpersonal metafunction in text messages a case study of group text messages among teachers of english at viet anh school

BINH DUONG PROVINCIAL PEOPLE’S COMMITTEE THU DAU MOT UNIVERSITY TRUONG THI THUY TRINH ANALYSIS OF INTERPERSONAL METAFUNCTION IN TEXT MESSAGES: A CASE STUDY OF GROUP TEXT MESSAGES AMONG TEACHERS OF ENGLISH AT VIET ANH SCHOOL MAJOR: ENGLISH LANGUAGE MAJOR CODE: 22 02 01 MASTER THESIS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE BINH DUONG PROVINCE - 2021 BINH DUONG PROVINCIAL PEOPLE’S COMMITTEE THU DAU MOT UNIVERSITY TRUONG THI THUY TRINH ANALYSIS OF INTERPERSONAL METAFUNCTION IN TEXT MESSAGES: A CASE STUDY OF GROUP TEXT MESSAGES AMONG TEACHERS OF ENGLISH AT VIET ANH SCHOOL MAJOR: ENGLISH LANGUAGE MAJOR CODE: 22 02 01 MASTER THESIS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE SUPERVISED BY NGUYEN VU PHUONG, PhD BINH DUONG PROVINCE - 2021 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Nguyen Vu Phuong, who has given expertise support for the development and completion of my thesis His support has facilitated my professional growth as a researcher, and he offered me his guidance and thorough critique with expertise I also owe him gratitude for his patience and encouragement throughout the process of the study I wish to express my deep gratitude to 15 teachers of English at Viet Anh School who kindly agreed to participate in this study The data collection would not have been completed without their support I give my sincere thanks to these participants for their willingness and arranging time in their heavy schedules to participate in this study I also would like to thank the management of Viet Anh School for their support on my completion of the thesis My gratitude is due to the postgraduate administrative office personnel at Thu Dau Mot University for providing the necessary support during my study period I highly appreciate their care and service Special thanks are due to my grandma, parents, brother and sister for their support, love, and encouragement that promoted my strength and passion to achieve a master’s degree i ABSTRACT This study examines an interpersonal metafunction and textism analysis of group text messaging among teachers of English at Viet Anh School 1090 teachers of English’ messages were analysed in terms of speech function, mood, modality, personal pronoun and categories of textism (including linguistic textism, typing error and contextual textism) in order to find out how the interpersonal metafunction was being served in English teacher’ text messages and how the social relationship among these teachers was expressed through their language in text messages Systemic Functional Grammar was used as the theoretical framework to guide the study The analysis reveals that through interpersonal metafunction the relationship among teachers of English established and maintained The analysis indicates that the teachers of English often use text messages for providing more information and demanding services by the dominant use of declaratives clauses in their interaction These teachers of English also perform their plans or desires about their future intention through the frequent use of modality such as ‘will’, ‘can’ or ‘could’ Through the analysis of personal pronouns, it can be clear that the teachers of English tend to interact with each other by sharing their points of view rather than mentioning about other things or persons Their social relation is shortened through the popular use of pronouns ‘I’, ‘we’ and ‘you’ Moreover, the application of textism shows that the mutual comprehension among English teachers through the pragmatic use of non-standard form in text messaging and the limited use of categories of textism did not lead the receivers to confusions or misunderstanding The findings suggest that declarative clauses are suggested to transfer more information to the teachers In addition, the use of ‘will’, ‘can’ and ‘could’ for indicating the inclination or probability of the teachers of English which is applied in order to show attitude and intention in the performance their role in the society Moreover, the frequent use of personal pronouns ‘I’, ‘We’ and ‘You’ indicates about the close relationship among the teachers of English when they interact to ii each other in order to show their position in the process of exchanging of information Textism benefits because teachers of English can give more expressions on their information conveyed through the pragmatic use of nonstandard form in text messages iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT i ABSTRACT ii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv LIST OF TABLES vi LIST OF FIGURES vi LIST OF APPENDICIES vii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background of the study 1.2 Rationale of the study 1.3 Scope of the study 1.4 Objectives and research questions of the study 1.5 Significance of the study 1.6 Organization of the study CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Text messaging and its role in communication and its challenge 2.1.1 Text messaging 2.1.2 Role of text messaging in communication 10 2.1.3 Challenges of using text messages 11 2.2 Theoretical and Practical Studies on Text Messaging 12 2.3 Textism: Pragmatics of Word Form in Text Messages 14 2.3.1 Textism 14 2.3.2 Pragmatics of word form in text messages 16 2.4 Theoretical background: Systemic Functional Grammar 17 2.4.1 An overview of Systemic Functional Grammar 17 2.4.2 Context 18 2.4.3 Metafunction 19 2.4.4 Interpersonal metafunction and the clause 21 2.4.4.1 Speech functions 22 2.4.4.2 Mood 27 2.4.4.3 Polarity and modality 34 2.4.4.4 Personal pronoun 37 iv 2.4.5 Previous research findings 38 2.5 Summary and research gap 40 2.5.1 Summary 40 2.5.2 Research gap 42 2.6 The framework of the study 43 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 47 3.1 Research Design 47 3.2 Sampling 47 3.3 Data Collection 49 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS 55 4.1 Mood 55 4.1.1 Mood types and speech functions 55 4.1.1.1 Declaratives 56 4.1.1.2 Interrogatives 58 4.1.1.3 Imperatives 59 4.1.1.4 Minor clause 60 4.1.1.5 Exclamatives 61 4.1.2 Speech function and responses 62 4.2 Modality 66 4.2.1 Inclination/ futurity 69 4.2.2 Probability 70 4.2.3 Obligation 71 4.2.4 Usuality 72 4.3 Personal pronouns 73 4.4 Textism 76 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 81 5.1 Summary of findings 81 5.2 Implications 82 5.3 Recommendations for future studies 83 5.4 Concluding remarks 84 REFERENCES 85 APPENDICIES ９３ v LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1 Categories of textism and examples 14 Table 2.2 Speech roles and commodities in interaction 23 Table 2.3 Speech function and responses 23 Table 2.4: Example of Mood element structure 27 Table 2.5: Finite Verbal Operator 28 Table 2.6: Example of Structure of declarative mood 30 Table 2.7: Example of Structure of Yes/No interrogative 30 Table 2.8 Example of Interrogative Clause 31 Table 2.9: Example of Imperative Mood 32 Table 2.10: Example of Exclamative mood 33 Table 2.11: The Degree of modalisation realisations in English 35 Table 2.12: The Degree of modulation realisations in English 36 Table 2.13: Personal pronouns in English 37 Table 3.1 The participants of the study 48 Table 3.2: Data Analysis Sheet 51 Table 4.1: Mood types and speech functions 55 Table 4.2: Speech functions and their responses 62 Table 4.3: Semantic realisation of modality 66 Table 4.4 Number and percentage of types of modality 68 Table 4.5: Use of personal pronouns 73 Table 4.6: Textisms in the text messages 76 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: The framework of the study 44 Figure 2: The steps in analysing the data 53 vi LIST OF APPENDICIES Appendix A: Samples of data analysis ９３ Appendix B: Emailed request for participation ９６ Appendix C: Consent form for participants at Viet Anh School ９７ vii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background of the study The rapid development of the technology (e.g., modern devices such as mobile phones) appears to meet the needs for the communication and entertainment The development of modern telecommunication has brought people closer in order to open all aspects of life Among effective tools for conveying information, text messaging is becoming more popular when it responds to various purposes by its written language It is the most effective, convenient and common technological tool for communication because it is time-saving and economical (Mampa & Kwema, 2005) According to DeVito (2001), communication is one of the key mediators in today’s world Communication occurred firstly in oral forms which were then transferred into written ones Thus, oral and written communications have become part of human life and have been hard to separate (Soffer, 2010) Text messaging has brought benefits for communication to users as regards speed, security, and connection which are evaluated highly in the world Besides that, the evolution of language was mainly influenced by the speed of texting messages, because it is important for the users of texting messaging to have a timely reply rather than a grammatically correct one Soffer (2010) stated that interpersonal communication through texting messages is not as effective as traditional face-to-face interaction since the expressions in text messages are lack emotions on face, gestures, voice and sight However, he regarded these are as the key components for creating personal and professional relationships Halliday and Matthiessen (2004) expressed that language functions build and maintain social relationship between writers and readers The way the texters apply their language in texting indicates their behaviors and attitudes in receiving the information from messages Also, people interact with one another and share all kinds of information such as expressing their status, social and individual attitudes by sending ... i ABSTRACT This study examines an interpersonal metafunction and textism analysis of group text messaging among teachers of English at Viet Anh School 1090 teachers of English? ?? messages were analysed... interpersonal metafunction in the text messages of teachers of English at Viet Anh school In addition, textism is regarded as the main feature of text messaging which will be analysed in term of three... maintained The analysis indicates that the teachers of English often use text messages for providing more information and demanding services by the dominant use of declaratives clauses in their interaction