A Genre-Based Investigation Into The Schematic Structure Of The Presidential Inaugural Addresses

As an important type of historical and political text, the presidential inaugural address has always been the subject of historians, politicians and linguists. This paper attempts to approach the presidential inaugural address from the perspective of genre analysis, which in recent years is developing into a more effective and revealing way of analyzing discourses. In the present study, the presidential inaugural address is characterized as a special type of genre. After examining all the fifty-four presidential inaugurals the author concludes that there indeed exists an identifiable schematic structure in presidential inaugural addresses by which the information is organized, and that a typical presidential inaugural address may contain eight moves through which the form-function correlation is revealed and the understanding of cognitive structuring of presidential inaugurals is improved. Each move of inaugural addresses is further illustrated and analyzed in details and at the same time their flexibility in practical use is pointed out. At the end of the paper suggestions are provided for follow-up research.