Attitude Resources In Donald Trump’s Inaugural Address

Political speech is a speech about politics,which represents a certain standpoint and interests of the speaker.To win support of public,politicians need to speak in public.The political speech usually appears in the form of unshakable views and rich reasoning.In this way the speak makes the audience accept his attitude and stand,then transform it into action.As a kind of political speech,the American presidential inaugural address is a speech delivered by the newly elected president to the American public and the world.In this way,the new president expounds his political thoughts and principles to inspire the American public and win their support.The purpose of their speech is to maintain close ties with the people,persuade them to accept their political purpose and support the new government.The language of the inaugural address is often carefully selected and polished.Therefore,it is meaningful to study the language of inaugural address from the perspective of linguistics.Trump is a special president in American history.He is famous for his business identity and language with personal style.After a year tumultuous elections,his election drew great attention of the word.In 2017,he delivered a 20-minute inaugural address in front of the White House.It is an important platform for president to communicate with American public and the world,which attracts scholars to analyze it from many aspects.Martin’s Appraisal Theory expands the interpersonal function of Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammer.Appraisal Theory has three subsystems: attitude,engagement and graduation.Attitude system is the core of Appraisal Theory.It can be divided to affect resources,judgment resources and appreciation resources,each of them is a collection of resources.Different resources are used to achieve different interpersonal meanings.This study will analyze Trump’s inaugural address in 2017 based on the attitude subsystem of Martin’s Appraisal Theory.This study adopts the method of combining qualitative and quantitate to explore the distribution and characteristics of attitude resources and analyze the purpose of using these attitude resources.By analyzing,the author finds that firstly,there are abundant attitude resources in Trump’s inaugural address.The total number is 195.The three types of resources are widely used,and the most widely distributed resources are affect resources and appreciation resources,accounting for 43.41% and 36.10% respectively.Judgment resources are the least distributed in speeches,accounting for 15.61%.The most prominent feature of Trump’s speech is the extensive use of affect resources.As a political speech,it is usually avoided using words with personal emotional tendency to maintain the objectivity and impartiality of the speech.However,affect resources are most widely distributed in Trump’s inaugural address,which shows Trump’s distinctive personal characteristics and unique ruling style different from other politicians.Secondly,among attitude resources,the positive attitude is 147,accounts for 75.4%,and the negative attitude is 48,accounts for 24.6%.The use of positive attitude resources is higher than that of negative attitude resources.Negative attitude resources are mainly used to depict the unsatisfying situation of the United States,so that the people feel that the president is on the side of the people,so as to close the distance from the masses.The use of positive attitude resources accounts for a larger proportion,which is conducive to creating a relaxed atmosphere for the whole speech,and is more conducive to the public to accept his political ideas.It also shows that trump is very optimistic about his policy and political position,and strives to create a positive image of himself,so as to win the support of the American people.Finally,on the whole,the deployment of different resources are used to better realize Trump’s political purpose.The use of affect resources is mainly distributed in the gratitude to the former president of the United States and the people.The use of appreciation resources mainly focuses on the description of the current unsatisfactory situation and the beautiful future of the United States.Trump exaggerates the reality by negative appreciation resources and then uses positive appreciation resources to depict the beautiful blueprint of the future of the United States.Through the contrast Trump achieves his purpose to motivate the audience.In this way he creates his own image of "Savior" and win people’s support.The use of judgment resources is distributed in the praise of American people’s tenacity and patriotism.Through the use of three different attitude resources,Trump has achieved the goal of shaping his image of "Savior",narrowing the distance with the people,winning the support of the people and implementing the "American First" policy.Through the analysis of attitude resources in Trump’s inaugural address,this study enriches the research on political speech from the perspective of Appraisal Theory.This study also provides enlightenment for scholars to analyze various attitude resources within the framework of Appraisal Theory,and is more conducive for readers to deeply understand political speeches by exploring the attitude resources of political speech.