A Functional Approach To The Interpersonal Meaning Of Mood And Modality In State Of The Union Address

State of the Union Address, delivered annually by the President of the USA, is an important type of political text with rich interpersonal meaning.This paper analyzes the interpersonal meaning of mood and modality in SUA in the framework of the Systemic Functional Linguistics. The analysis is conducted on the strata of lexico-grammar, semantics and context, and focused on how the interpersonal meaning is realized in State of the Union Address.In the analysis of mood, the paper identifies the main mood types in State of the Union Address, and explores the interpersonal meaning of these mood types. The functions of the declarative mood are examined in detail. In the analysis of modality, the thesis looks at it from the perspectives of modality types, orientation and value. We find that modulation is far more than modalization and that modality of median value is more than modality of high and low value.The paper applies the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics to the analysis of political text, which is helpful not only in the better understanding of State of the Union Address, but also in the Chinese-English translation such as working reports delivered by the Chinese Premier.