Interpersonal Function Of Barack Obama's Presidential Campaign Speeches

As the first African-American President in the history of the United States of America, Barack Obama will be the source of hundreds of thousands scholars in the world. Due to his persuasive language and eloquence, his speeches that were made during his election campaign are selected as the discourses of this thesis. The analysis is based on Halliday?s Interpersonal Function indicating that language is the medium of information exchanges during the speaker and the listener.In Obama?s campaign speeches, he has three primary aims --- Persuasion, Encouragement and Mobilization, which were achieved by Mood, Modality and Tone. Obama did his utmost to encourage the American People to believe in their hope and ability to change the country and unite as one people to make it happen. He used more you than I or we in Subject to make people understand that the campaign was more about them than himself as a candidate. In Modality, more clauses are modulated than modalized, for there were more inclination and obligations than probabilities and usuality functioning as encouragement and mobilization. In his speeches, modality was realized by modal adjuncts, modal operators and interpersonal metaphors. In addition, tones also showed how Obama persuade people to stand by him, encourage his people not to lose hope and mobilize them to cast the vote in the final election.