A Study Of Evidentiality In Obama's Political Speeches

This thesis applies the Appraisal Theory and the Face Redressive Strategy to the analysis of evidentiality in the U.S. President Obama's political speeches. It aims to discuss the realizations, features and interpersonal functions of evidentiality.According to Yang's classification (Yang, 2009: 88), evidentiality could be divided into five types: zero-marked evidentials, sensory evidentials, reporting evidentials, inferring evidentials and belief evidentials. The author of this thesis has chosen thirty-seven sentences in Obama's political speeches as data. On the basis of former researches, the author summarizes three interpersonal functions: the persuasive function, the interactive function and the evaluative function.This thesis has certain practical significances. First, this research can help improve people's ability of revealing speakers'communicative purposes and ideology. Second, this thesis could be taken for reference in public speech writing and teaching. Third, the appropriate use of evidentiality could improve people's communicative competence.