Genre Analysis Of Presidential Inaugural Addresses In The United States (1789-2001)

The term "genre" ultimately is derived from the Latin word for "kind" or "class". It traditionally serves to indicate different kinds of literary and artistic works. In recent years, language educators and linguists have extended it to identify classes of language use and communication in all areas of life. Since 1970s, the focus in stylistics, text linguistics and discourse analysis has shifted from a surface-layered description of the lexical and syntactical features or formats of discourse to a deeper and multi-layered explanation of the macro-structures and communicative functions of discourse, and thus genre analysis emerges and becomes an important branch of discourse analysis. This thesis is a tentative endeavor to put the genre analysis theory into practice, and carries out an analysis of Presidential Inaugural Addresses (PIAs) within the framework established by Swales.To construct the theoretical basis for the whole thesis, the writer first introduces the genre theories held by the two major schools in the field of linguistics concerning this concept - the Swalesian School with the representatives of John M. Swales and Vijak K. Bhatia, and the Australian School with the representative of Jim R. Martin. After a careful examination and comparison of the definitions given by these two schools, the writer points out that the two schools actually define genre in an essentially similar way. Both of them consider the communicative purpose as the prototypical criterion for genre identity, and believe that genre is conventionalized and routinelike as well as generative. Adopting the basic viewpoints shared by the two schools, the writer proposes a working definition for the sake of the present study: Genre is a sociolinguistic communicative event characterized by a set of communicative purposes recognized by the members of the discourse community. Most of such events result in spoken or written discourse, and each has its own distinctive generic structure and linguisticcharacteristics which are determined by its communicative purposes.Genre analysis involves both stylistic analysis and discourse analysis. Generally speaking, it operates with three aspects: 1) communicative purpose - for defining the genre; 2) identification of obligatory identical move - to capture the structure of the genre; 3) rhetorical strategies for the linguistic realization of moves. Genre analysis aims to relate the linguistic features of a genre to the action they perform. Comparing genre analysis with other approaches people often adopt when analyzing discourse, the writer finds that traditional ways including discourse analysis, stylistic analysis are based solely on linguistic description, and fail to explain why certain texts have got certain features, whereas genre analysis lays greater emphasis on the communicative purpose(s), goes beyond the simple description of linguistic phenomena to the explanation of why certain texts tend to be constructed in certain ways, and tries to make clear the relationship between the communicative purpose(s) and the textual and lexico-grammatical features.In terms of the particular genre of PIAs, the writer first identifies its multi-layered communicative purposes - to enumerate briefly and justify the principles which will guide the newly-elected presidents in the administrative policy of the government; and more important to convince a national audience of their appropriateness and benefits, mold public opinion, inspire public action, present the new government in a favorable light and win the largest amount of applause and support. The writer then points out some general features of this genre. As far as the style is concerned, the particular public-speaking situation determines that this genre has the dual characteristics of both spoken and written discourse. As far as the content is concerned, the inaugurals are in close touch with the times when the presidents are elected and usually focus on the subjects that at that time chiefly engag...