An Investigation Into The Schematic Structure For American Presidential Addresses Within The Framework Of Genre Analysis

As a specific form of discourse sharing the characteristics of both oral and written discourse, American presidential inaugural address (APIA) has always been arousing scholars'great concern in the field of applied linguistics. However, their studies on APIA are mainly made from a perspective of translation, stylistics, rhetoric, and so on. Only limited numbers of scholars commit themselves to the study of APIA within the framework of genre analysis. On the basis of establishment of a corpus, the author makes an analysis of APIAs from a generic point of view in the present study in the hope that such a corpus-based genre analysis of APIAs can shed some light on the following studies.At the first stage of the study, the author defines APIAs as a separate genre according to the definition proposed by Swales (1990) and Bhatia (1993) and then makes a simple random sampling for APIAs from the corpus established beforehand. Using for reference Swales'(1990) CARS model and research procedures put forward by Bhatia (1993), the author makes a genre-based analysis of the sample. The result shows that the randomly-selected sample indeed has its own identifiable moves at the macro level, through which the communicative purposes of the APIA are achieved. Meanwhile, several different strategies are employed to realize those moves. Inspired by the result, the author then conducts a comprehensive analysis of the remaining 54 APIAs within the framework of genre analysis. Finally, a rough schematic structure which the successive Presidents always conform to is concluded.At the second stage of the study, the author classifies all the APIAs into two groups according to the different clan attributes of the Presidents. One group is composed of APIAs delivered by the Democrats, and the other consists of those by the Republicans. The author makes a contrastive analysis of the frequency of moves in APIAs by the Democrats and the Republicans respectively. From their different political philosophy and views of traditional cultural value, the author describes, analyzes and explains the similarities and differences in the frequency of moves. Meanwhile, the author makes an analysis of linguistic features in obligatory moves.The former studies on APIA(s) usually focus on an analysis of linguistic features in one or several APIA(s) from a perspective of stylistics. However, the present method of corpus-based genre analysis breaks such limitations. This is also the significance of the study, the author argues. Meanwhile, a schematic structure for all the APIAs as a whole is proposed. A master of the schematic structure for APIA can not only help non-native speakers of English cognize this kind of genre but also enable them to anticipate the development trend of APIA.