Research On The Stylistics Of The Addresses Of National Leaders

Though the method of the analysis of the three metafunctions by M. A. K. Halliday is widely used in discourse analysis, no research has yet been carried out on the stylistic features of the addresses of national leaders. In the hope of laying the groundwork for further study on its features, the research has been carried out, firstly, to apply the three metafunctions of systemic functional grammar postulated by Halliday to analyze the addresses of national leaders; secondly, to reveal the registers of the addresses of national leaders: field, tenor and mode; thirdly, to further examine the effectiveness of systemic functional grammar postulated by Halliday in analyzing discourse.Chapter 2 analyzes the ideational metafunction of the five addresses of national leaders: Material process occurs most frequently; relational process and mental process are less than material process; there are a few of verbal and existential processes and no behavourial process; total number of processes is more than that of the clauses.Chapter 3 analyzes the interpersonal metafunction of the five addresses of national leaders: Almost all the sentences are declarative; the first tense verbs are mainly present; the second, past; there are quite a few modal verbs and other modal elements and they are mainly used with the present tense; total number of clauses is more than that of sentences.Chapter 4 analyzes the thematic structure and the thematic progression in the five addresses of national leaders: Most of the themes are unmarked ones; there are a few of marked themes, which are adjuncts; there are some connective themes; thematic progression is a combination of several patterns of thematic progression; referential chain, produced by a combination of lexical cohesion (repetition and synonymy) and reference, puts the thematic progression forward.Chapter 5 studies the features of words of the five addresses of national leaders: The addresses are a bit longer; there are not many paragraphs in each address; the paragraphs are not long; sentences are a little longer.The main points developed in this study are as follows:1 The former analysis indicates that field, tenor and mode all restricton the use of language and tenor, especially, functional tenor always plays the guiding role.2 The field of addresses decides that the percentages of material process and unmarked theme are the highest. The highest percentage of material process, the majority of the first present verbs and past tense verbs and the use of modal verbs and other modal elements embody the guiding role of tenor: address of national leaders to the public of the whole country-the object of which is to express their standpoint and attitude on the unexpected happening.3 Its mode decides that it is written to be spoken, some marked themes are used, conjunctive themes and the thematic progressions are mainly on the progressions with the same theme and the progressions with the same rheme. The theory of thematic structure and thematic progression plays an important and instructive role in the analysis of discourse.4 Functional tenor decides not only the choice on the interpersonal meaning but also the choice on the ideational meaning and textual meaning. Functional tenor is a key factor in differentiating sub-style and research on stylistic feature. Maybe this is the feature of the research on stylistics in applying systemic functional grammar of M. A. K. Halliday...