Interpersonal Metafunction Analysis of Deception in British News

Abstract

This paper investigates how the interpersonal metafunction in linguistic choice associated with the strategies of deception in British news. This study attempts to answer these questions: what are the elements of interpersonal metafunction? how do the strategies of deception correlate with the interpersonal metafunction in British news? It aims to analyse how the interpersonal metafunction is used deception in British news, to identify the strategies of deception correlate with interpersonal metafunction in British news. Its hypotheses: deceptive news will show a higher frequency in specific linguistic characters concerns with interpersonal metafunction and deceptive news associates with occurrence of prominent strategy of deceptive such as equivocation. To achieve the aims of the study and prove or reject the hypothesis, drawing on Halliday and Matthiessen's (2014) systemic functional linguistic as a theoretical background linking with the strategies of deception are used to analyise the selected data. Furthermore, a statistical tool embodied by the percentage calculation is utilized to evaluate the results. The essential finding is appeared by this study is that British news usually serves the strategies of deception like equivocation, falsification, concealment, distortion, ostensible promise, and depersonalization. For interpersonal metafunction, deceptive statements fulfill through the elements of mood and elements of residue.