An Interpersonal Analysis Of President Hu Jintao's Public Speeches At International Meetings

An international meeting is a conference held to discuss certain issues and problems among the representatives of different parties or countries. The public speech of political leaders is a kind of political speech. The speaker who represents certain party, government or country towards certain important issues makes it. The speaker's task is to propose political viewpoint, attract audience and persuade the audience to accept what he said. So the international meeting is a channel for different countries in the world to strengthen communication and cooperation. At international meetings, a speaker needs to establish his/her authority as well as maintain good relations with the audience. Thus the public speech at international meetings deserves our attention due to its complicated characteristics.Lots of studies on the interpersonal meanings of political discourses have been made before. However, most of the studies mainly focus on English political discourses. The study of Chinese materials is limited. With the increase of China's influence on the international society, the political speeches of our leaders have attracted more attention. In this study, a qualitative and quantitative analysis will be combined to discuss the interpersonal meanings of President Hu Jintao's public speeches at international meetings. Through the study of the chosen fifteen pieces of speeches, we find that President Hu Jintao mainly uses mood, modality, personal pronoun and attitude of Appraisal system in his speeches to realize the interpersonal meanings. In mood system, our president mainly uses declaratives to provide information and express attitudes and viewpoints. Lots of imperatives are employed to make requirements and suggestions for the attending representatives to achieve the purpose of the meetings. In modality system, President Hu mostly uses modulation of high values to make clear the purpose of the meeting and the responsibility of the audience. In his speeches, few second or third personal pronouns appeared. The speaker used the plural form of the first personal pronoun to strike a chord and shorten the distance between the audiences. When mentioning the current international situation and issues, our president uses lots of negative affect expressions to attract the audience's attention and express the severity of the problems. However, a large number of expressions of inclination are employed to express our willingness and determination to make contribution to the world development. In that way, the speaker can build good relations with the audience and gain their supports.