The Interpersonal Meanings Of English Tenses In The First Bush-Kerry Presidential Debate

On the basis of research both at home and abroad, as well as the theories of Halliday's systemic functional grammar, discourse analysis and pragmatics, this thesis attempts to analyze the interpersonal meanings and functions of tenses in the first television presidential debate between Bush and Kerry so that we can hopefully get some deeper insights into the English tense as a means of realizing the interpersonal meanings in television political debates. We will see that tenses not only have the conventional interpersonal meanings such as protecting the status of the speaker, attracting audiences and maintaining good relationship with audiences, but also embody the special interpersonal meanings in political debate, such as revealing multiple aims of the speaker, presenting the paradox of upholding authority while at the same time greatly shortening the psychological distance between the speaker and audiences.Besides introduction and conclusion, the main part of this thesis has four chapters. In the first chapter, we try to establish the theoretical foundation: the types and functions of the present and past tenses. The second chapter presents features of political speeches in two parts: features of public speeches and features of political debates. The third chapter probes into the interpersonal meanings of the simple present tense and the past tense. We will see that tenses can be integrated or switched in a single text. The fourth chapter is a case study of the first television presidential debate between Bush and Kerry. This chapter is divided into two parts: 1 .interpersonal meanings arising from switching between the present tense and the past tense; 2.different tenses used in the television presidential debate on different topics and the reasons behind Bush and Kerry's choices of different tenses in their debates on the same topic.