| People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party Central Committee, is the most authoritative and comprehensive daily newspaper with the largest circulation in China. The National Day editorial in People's Daily summarizes the current outstanding achievements of China in economic, political, cultural and other areas and introduces deployment of one period work in the current year or the following years. The editorial carries political message. Modal words, such as"yinggai(应该)"and"bixu(必须)"can frequently be found in the discourse of the National Day editorial. Modal words involving speaker's subjective attitude possess different interpersonal functions, in which the deontic modal words directly reflect power relations between the speaker and the listener.This thesis selects 54 National Day editorials in People's Daily(1949-2009) as research materials and explores the changes of power relations in editorials between the listener and speaker as well as the changes of the subjective identity in the discourse on the basis of the quantitative and qualitative analyses on the uses of deontic modal words and deontic modal sentences. This thesis preliminarily sets the research scope of modal words and puts forward the theory and methods of this study. Deontic modal words, denotic modal sentences and imperative target in National Day editorial are discussed respectively in the following chapters. The author lays emphasis on the analysis of four types of imperative modal sentences and changes in relationship between imperative subject and imperative object. Finally, the author holds that there are changes in subjective identity in the discourse and calls for its reconstruction. The reasons why these changes emerge are also provided. This research states that the subjective identity in the discourse changes as social environment varies, which from the spokesman of the Communist Party Central Committee into the editorial department of newspaper.
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