Interpersonal Function Analysis Of Bush's Inauguration Speech

Based on the theories of Halliday's systemic functional grammar, theory of discourse analysis and so on, the thesis uses Bush's inauguration speeches as an example to demonstrate how interpersonal function is generally realized in a political speech. Through a systematic analysis of linguistic elements on the lexical, the sentential, and the discoursal level, it is found that pronouns, modal auxiliaries, tense, non-declarative structure, imperative structure and thematic progressive patterns are the important elements used in Bush's speeches to achieve interpersonal function.In recent years, the researches on the interpersonal function of certain discourses become a trend in linguistic study. For instance, Sultan analyzes the interpersonal function in the discourse of doctors'diagnosis reports and Li Zhanzi studies the realization of the interpersonal function of the biographies while other researchers contribute to the interpersonal function in the discourse of critique, biased speech, literature works, television advertisements, and so on. In 1983, Huble and Axel published"Under Statements and Hedges in English". In the same year, Pateman and Trevor's book"How is Understanding an Advertisement Possible?"came into being. In the year 2000, Fuertes,Olivera and Pedro.A wrote an article named"Persuasion and Advertising English". Although political discourse is not specially treated in these works or articles, they have provided with the unique perspectives for the research on the political discourse.According to Halliday, there are three meta-functions in every language system. One of them is called interpersonal function (IP fort short), IP functions a lot in establishing and maintaining the social relationships between speakers through the use of language in daily life. Halliday holds that the interpersonal function in communication not only realizes the speaker's attitudes, his or her role, status, point of view, intention and judgment but also influences the receivers'point of view and actions. The relationship between the speakers and the hearers is dynamic. Halliday's research on the interpersonal function was mainly carried out from the perspectives of mood, modality and intonation. Halliday'grammatical system is superb, but it should be noticed that the realization methods of interpersonal function are miscellaneous on the level of discourse. This thesis aims at exploring the various methods of the realization of the interpersonal function used in the political discourse and expanding...