Systemic Functional Linguistics and Interpersonal Meaning in Business Discourse: A Comparative study between English and Kurdish

Abstract

The current study examines the role of the interpersonal meta-function in a commercial context among language users in both English and Central Kurdish (from now on CK). The study also aims to examine the role of the interpersonal meta-function in constructing functions in speech by business leaders. The study adopts a quantitative and qualitative approach, along with content analysis, to examine business leaders' public remarks. Two speeches from Jack Ma and Faruq Mala Mustafa ware transcribed. The methodology adopts a qualitative exploratory approach to look at public speeches by business leaders in English and CK business discourse. This paper is an attempt to understand how, and what are the most common Interpersonal meta-functions subcategories used in both speeches. The study also tries to understand how using personal pronouns affect the meta-functions used by the two speakers. The results quantitatively display information about mood types, the impact of using and selecting personal pronouns, and the frequencies of each personal pronoun in a public speech in English and CK. The study found that the most common type of mood is a positive declarative mood. In addition, the selection and use of Personal Systems have a significant impact on how the speaker displays his attitude, influences, and maintains intimacy and friendship with the audience. The first person is the preferred personal pronoun in both English and CK.