An Analysis Of The Inaugural Speeches Of The Presidents Of The United States From The Perspective Of Graduation In Appraisal Theory

The Inaugural Speech of the President of the United States plays an important role in the US political life and meanwhile it’s always the essence of political speech. This thesis explores how the inaugurated presidents extend their attitudes and stances from the perspective of Graduation in Appraisal Theory and how they distribute Graduation resources. The thesis, taking the grading system from Martin as a reference, chooses 6 inaugural speeches as analyzing data and then illustrates the use and distribution of Graduation resources in the Inaugural Speeches with the help of Coder 4.68.The analysis proves that:1) In Graduation, upscaling and infusing resources take up a majority of all resources. Intensification is used more frequently than Quantification; 2) To make the audience naturally accept the expressed ideas and stances, Modality is frequently used to realize this goal. In the process, modalities with high intensity are often involved in repetition to emphasize the importance of the words.3) In Attitude, the most frequently used Appreciation effectively states presidents’attitudes and stances through evaluation on issues while the most frequently used Entertain in Engagement greatly ensures the positive temperament of the presidents and makes the speech more persuasive.4) In inaugural speeches, upscaling resources always effectively draw the audience’s attention while the upscaling infusing Process and Quality resources are effective to make the audience accept the stances or take actions as expected. Thus, this paper clearly proves Graduation is an effective tool for speakers to express their attitude and stances, and it does good to align with the audience and facilitates the further understanding of speeches.