Meta-functional Analysis Of Public Political Speeches

Political speech refers to the speech delivered by the people, aiming to takestands, expound and publicize viewpoints on domestic affairs and foreign relationsboth at home and abroad (Li&Zou,2003:29). As an important weapon for politicalstruggles, political speeches represent the speaker’s political views and governanceand have attracted more and more attention.David Cameron became Prime Minister after the General Election in May2010.As the youngest prime minister since1812in Britain, Cameron’s speeches have beenattracted by many scholars from all over the world. Based on the theories ofHalliday’s systemic-functional grammar, this thesis uses the Cameron’s eightspeeches as samples to analyze the features of political speeches from the perspectivesof three meta-functions: ideational function, interpersonal function and textualfunction and expects to find out how meta-function is generally realized in politicalspeeches.Using the theory of the three meta-functions, the author makes analysis of theembodiment of the ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function inEnglish political speeches, which are mainly realized through transitivity, mood andmodality, person system and theme respectively. Therefore, it proves that theSystemic-Functional Grammar can be adopted to analyze political speeches and it isactually effective. With the data analysis and discussion, we can find out that:(1)From the perspective of transitivity system, the material processes have an obviouspredominance in Cameron’s speeches, followed by relational processes and mentalprocesses; behavioral processes, verbal processes and existential processes are seldomused. This is because in political speeches, the speakers’ primary aim is to present theobjective fact and persuade the audience to accept their political thoughts andviewpoint. So the speakers are likely to use the material and relational process. AndCameron also uses lots of mental processes in his speech. The reason is that as anewly-elected prime minister under the background of the global financial crisis, hewants more audiences to know and understand his policies and thoughts by employing this kind of process.(2) In terms of mood system, declaratives are prominent inCameron’s speeches, and in this way, he conveys much information about his politicalattitude and policy. With skillful manipulation of implicit imperative mood, Cameronsucceeds in enhancing his authority while mitigates power and establishes a goodrelationship with audience. And the seldom use of interrogatives avoids the monotonyand shortens the distance between audience and speaker.(3) In terms of modality,Cameron often uses various modal operators to show his status as prime minister butalso avoid being too arrogant and radical.(4) In the person system, various personalpronouns attract people’s attention, maintain relationship and also achieve politicalaims.(5) From the aspects of thematic structure, Cameron often uses unmarked themeto make the content of speech understood better. But when he wants to emphasize thenew information, he chooses the marked theme to attract the audiences’ attention. Theinteractive use of marked theme and unmarked theme can not only lay emphases onsome key points but also make the speeches easy to understand, so the goal ofpolitical speeches can be achieved.Through the analysis of the speech, it can help the readers or audience betterunderstand the meaning of the political discourse in a deeper level and perceive thespeakers’ intention, and also serves a great help for the speakers to organize anddeliver wonderful speeches. What’s more, it can prove Halliday’s theory of systemicfunctional grammar (SFG) is practicable and applicable to discourse analysis.