回声话语的元功能研究及其在大学英语听力教学中的应用

A Study of Echo Utterance from Meta-Functional Perspective and Its Application in College English Listening Teaching and Learning

摘要: 回声话语是日常对话中一种普遍的语言现象，但国内关于其在教学中的应用研究较少。本文从韩礼德提出的“三大纯理功能”理论出发，从概念功能、人际功能、语篇功能三个维度对回声话语进行了研究。本文的语料来源于大学英语四级、六级和专业英语四级、八级四项权威英语考试中的听力材料，通过人工筛选，收集回声话语语料。研究发现，概念功能指向的回声话语主要用于求证或要求解释前述内容，回声问句的回答能帮助学生理解听力片段的中心词；说话人能通过人际功能指向的回声问句表达自己的态度和情感，这可以应用到态度判断题的解答上；重复是词汇层面的一种衔接手段，实现语篇功能的回声话语主要有话题延伸和反馈两个作用，它能帮助判断新旧信息节点的位置。

Abstract: Echo utterance is a common linguistic phenomenon in daily conversation, but few scholars in China have conducted research on its application in teaching. Based on Halliday’s theory of “three meta-functions”, this paper studies echo utterance from ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function. The corpus of this paper comes from the listening materials of four authoritative English tests: CET-4, CET-6, TEM-4 and TEM-8. And the corpus of echo utterance is screened and collected manually. It is found that the ideational function-oriented echo utterances are mainly used to verify or ask for explanation of the above content, and the answers of echo questions can help students understand the central word of the listening segment. The speaker can express his attitude and emotion through the echo question by performing the interpersonal function and this kind of echo utterance can be applied in answering the attitude judgment question. Repetition is a cohesive device at the lexical level. In terms of the textual aspect, echo utterance mainly has two functions: topic extension and feedback. It can help judge the position of nodes in different information segments.