A Diachronic Stylistic Analysis Of The Lexical Changes Of American Presidential Inaugural Addresses

American Presidential Inaugural Addresses,a sub-type of public political speaking,are publicly delivered by the newly-elected presidents on Inauguration Day to the whole country and world.In the addresses,they lay out their administrative creeds and persuade the public to accept and support their ideas.As a unique and practical variety,the addresses are really significant.With the passage of time,English is constantly changing,evolving and responding to new needs and demands decade by decade,generation by generation. American presidential inaugural addresses at different stages surely embody the characteristics of each time period.This thesis has made a detailed research into the lexical changes of American presidential inaugural addresses.Seven inaugural addresses are selected,including those of the first president Gorge Washington and the newly elected president Barack Obama.Besides,a diachronic stylistic approach is employed to analyze the lexical changes of them because learning vocabulary forms an important part of learning English,for without words we can hardly convey our meaning and intentions clearly and definitely.A diachronic stylistic study of the lexical changes of American presidential inaugural addresses can not only help readers further understand the meaning,better appreciate the essence of the English language,but also broaden the scope of English public speaking analysis.What is more,it facilitates the improvement of the speech lovers' skills in using public speaking language and promotes the teaching of English comprehension and writing in colleges.The major findings of this study are as follows:the TTRs of American presidential inaugural addresses have decreased from the late 18^th century to the beginning of the 21^st century;six-letter words and longer words occur the most frequently,taking more than one forth of the word occurrence or even one third of it on the whole.Meanwhile,the first two APIAs delivered about two hundred years ago are more difficult than the last five in terms of their employment of long words. Besides,the mean word length is also on the decline;among the top 20 most frequently used words,all the first ten mostly appeared words are grammatical words; the degree of formality has been decreased with the more use of contractions and pronouns and less adaption of hard words,abstractions and nominalization.In addition,negation,words with religious colors and hollow words still play a very important role in the addresses to strength the presidents' ideas,set up resonance in the hearts of the audience,and thus bring a strong inciting effect.In a word,this diachronic study of the lexical changes of American presidential inaugural addresses aims to find out changes of public political speaking at the lexical level.Meanwhile,the analysis of the lexical changes of the American presidential inaugural addresses can not only broaden the scope of the stylistic study of the public political speaking,but also help the readers better appreciate the inaugural addresses and develop language skills of public speaking learners,and it is also helpful to us in teaching vocabulary and English public speaking in colleges.