Analysis Of Obama’s Victory Speech In2012from Halliday’s Three Meta-functions

When M.A.K Halliday wrote his book, An Introduction to Functional Grammar, he aimed at constructing a grammar which can provide a theoretical framework for Discourse Analysis. He aimed at establishing a theory that can be adopted to analyze any written discourse as well as spoken discourse in English. Halliday’s opinions about the aim are as follows:"In deciding how much ground to try to cover, I have had certain guiding principles in mind. The goal has been to construct a grammar for the purposes of text analysis:one that would make it possible to say sensible and useful things about any text, spoken or written, in modern English."(Halliday,2000:41)The author of this thesis chooses Systematic Functional Grammar as her theoretical base M.A.K Halliday’s Systematic Functional Grammar consists of two parts: Systematic Grammar and Functional Grammar. Systematic Grammar is a semiotic system which mainly deals with the internal relations of language as a systematic network of meaning potential. Functional Grammar is regarded as a tool to dispose the process and results of the language choices. Halliday constructs three meta-functions of Systematic Functional Grammar. The three meta-functions are ideational meta-function, interpersonal meta-function and textual meta-function.Firstly, based on the three meta-functions of Systematic Functional Grammar, this paper analyzes Obama’s Victory Speech in2012. On the basis of ideational meta-function, the paper mainly studies the realization of transitivity in this speech. It is found that Material Process takes the highest percentage with41%. Relational Process ranks the second with the percentage of31.1%. The third is Physiologic-mental Process taking up20.3%.By adopting the Material Processes, the speaker can enable the listeners to understand the actions of actors and what their goals are, especially the president’s goals.And Material Process enables the speaker to describe the occurring process of events. Relational Process is used to indicate the relationship among the various kinds of things or events and to identify the characteristics of people or events. The Physiologic-mental Process enables Obama to express his inner thoughts or his true feelings.Secondly, on the basis of interpersonal meta-function, this paper mainly studies the realization of personal pronouns, modal verbs and mood.It is found that the personal pronouns frequently appear in this speech with their total frequencies of208times. The first personal pronouns take up59.1%,123times in total. Plural form of first personal pronoun "we" is used as many as40times, which shows Obama pays much attention to the unity and integrity of the United States. He manages to shorten the distance between him and his audience. The second personal pronouns are worth mentioning. The percentage of the second personal pronouns is22.6%,47times in total. Usually,"you" is used as detachment to make the difference between the intended hearer and the speaker."You" is not frequently used in a speech because it will widen the distance between the intended hears and the speaker. However, in this speech, things are different. The primary task of "you" is not to detach the Americans from Obama but to owe achievements and success to Obama’s countrymen. With regard to the analysis of mood, in this speech, declarative types perfectly match with the content of this speech. Owing to declarative clauses, the most natural and true feelings are presented. And as to modal verbs analysis in this speech, the median value takes the largest share with the percentage of59.3%; followed by the low median value accounting for37%; the high value is only3.7%.Finally, on the basis of textual meta-function, this paper mainly studies thematic system and cohesion. It is found that Obama uses grammatical cohesion (reference, conjunction and substitution) as well as lexical cohesion (repetition, synonymy, antonymy and collocation) to achieve cohesive effect. And there are mainly three kinds of thematic progression pattern in this speech. How this speech uses cohesion and thematic progression pattern to achieve effect is explained in detail in Chapter6.As far as innovations in this thesis are concerned, theoretical improvement of Modality, Transitivity and Voice and the improvement of analytical methods should be mentioned. First, the author of this thesis redefines Modality. The author of this thesis has revised this definition a bit. The reasons are explained in Chapter5. Second, in terms of transitivity, behavioral process and mental process are combined into Physiologic-mental process. The author of this thesis combines the mental process with the behavioural process and calls them physiologic-mental process. Physiologic-mental Processes are processes of physiological and mental behavior. The specific reasons are illustrated in Chapter4. Third, the author of this thesis holds a different idea about the definition of Middle Voice. Inspired by traditional and Halliday’s opinions, the author of this thesis redefines the Middle Voice system. The concrete explanations are presented in Chapter4.