A Study On Thematic Structure In Public Speeches

Based on Halliday's thematic theories, and theories of thematic progression patterns proposed by linguists at home and abroad, the thesis makes an analysis of public speeches form the aspects of types of theme, distribution of different themes, constituents as theme, markedness of the theme and the thematic progression patterns.In this dissertation, both deductive approach and inductive approach are adopted with the aim to achieve a more reasonable and persuasive conclusion. 10 public speeches made by distinguished figures covering all aspects of life are selected as corpus.Through careful analysis, some outstanding thematic characteristics in public speeches are discovered: in public speeches, the simple theme is predominant; the pronouns instead of nouns or noun phrases are usually adopted; among the pronouns, the first person pronoun I holds the highest percentage whereas the second person pronoun you holds the least, which is a little different from Halliday's point of view about the order of pronouns in everyday conversation; the unmarked theme is dominant in public speeches; there are altogether 7 patterns of thematic progression, and among them, the constant-theme pattern and the simple linear pattern hold the dominant position. The logical semantic relations between themes and rhemes in public speeches are discussed in the analysis of thematic progression.The results obtained in this dissertation have four implications: the first one is to help the speaker to organize his speeches. The second one is to help the audiences to understand the speech. The third one is that it can provide the teacher with the suggestions of teaching how to write public speeches. The last one is that understanding Thematic Structure can be helpful for interpreters to comprehend public speeches and interpret them accurately.