ABSTRACT
The interpersonal metafunction deals with the speaker’s relationships. These can be of two types. First there are the relationships which the speaker establishes with his addressees, and second, there are the relationships he establishes with the content of his message. Declarative mood gives information, and in doing so attributes roles to the speaker and to his addressees. The speaker is the giver of information and the addressees are receivers of the information. The element of the verbal group which is used to distinguish declarative and interrogative mood in this way is known as the “finite”. The mood structure can be analysed as a mood element, which is made up of the subject and the finite which is the rest of the clause. Modality is the way in which a speaker expresses his relationship with his message. English has a wide range of ways in which modality can be encoded, but the most common is the use of modal auxiliaries.
