Transitivity Analysis Of American President Barack Obama's Inaugural Address

President Barack Obama ushered in a new era for the United States, becoming the first black leader of the country. However, Obama took in office when America suffered a lot from wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and an economic collapse not seen since the 1930s Great Depression. His Inaugural Address attracted the whole world's attentionThis thesis adopts Systemic-Functional Grammar as its theoretical framework to conduct a transitivity analysis in American President Barrack Obama's Inaugural Address. The aim of this thesis is to find the political motivation hidden by the form of language. At the meanwhile, this thesis tries to explore the deep social significance via transitivity analysis of the ideational function.To attain this goal, two research questions have been raised:1. What are the distributions of transitivity processes and main participants in American President Barack Obama's Inaugural Address?2. What are the functions of each transitivity process type and each involved participant in American President Barack Obama's Inaugural Address?A research is carried out in a quantitive analysis on the whole text of President Obama's Inaugural Address. With the data analysis and discussion, there are some findings: both material and relational process are the best options for Obama's political aims, because material and relational processes presented as the statements of reality from the perspective of onlookers. So they are more objective than other processes. We, our and us top the list in counting the main participants of the six processes of President Obama's Inaugural Address. President Obama wants to shorten the distance between him and the audience via the use of first person plural form. Most of you and your, in Obama's Inaugural Address may refer to the terrorists. You or your has a meaning of warning. Barack Obama seldom use I, my and me as participants, which not only manifests Barack Obama's modest and cooperative characters, but also ensure the political speech more objective, persuasive and impartial. There are still some limitations in this study. It remains open to be discussed and improved.