A Contrastive Analysis Of Attitudinal Meaning In President Roosevelt And Obama's Inaugural Addresses

Presidential inaugural address, an important part of western political genre, is drawing more and more attention all over the world. Many scholars have carried out comprehensive and systematic studies of presidential inaugural address from the perspectives of rhetoric, stylistics and psychology and so on.Appraisal theory, first proposed by James Martin and his colleague in 1900S, is a further development of interpersonal meaning of Systemic Functional Grammar; it focuses on all the attitudes which are negotiable in the discourse (Li Zhanzi,2002). Appraisal theory is a kind of resource in which attitude can be conveyed through language; it consists of three sub-systems:Attitude, Engagement and Graduation.In the present thesis, the author applied the theoretical model of Appraisal theory to analyze the attitudinal meanings conducted in President Roosevelt and Obama's inaugural addresses. This paper aims to explore the distribution and realization of attitudinal meanings in the addresses; meanwhile, the paper also intends to find out the similarities and differences between the adoption of attitudinal meanings in Roosevelt and Obama's inaugural address. Through the carefully-conducted analysis, the author gets the major findings. Firstly, there are some general similarities between Roosevelt and Obama's address.1. Both the presidential inaugural addresses are rich in attitudinal meanings, and the attitudinal meanings adopted in the two addresses are mostly positive.2. Both the presidents tend to apply positive attitudinal meanings when they mentioned something concerned about the nation, the people and the government with an intention to arouse much more support and loyalty from the public.3. Positive attitudinal meanings, particularly positive Affect in terms of security and positive Judgment in terms of Capability are massively applied in the addresses, with the aim to encourage the whole nation to get enough confidence and motivation in the hard time.4. Both the presidents adopt the explicit way in the realization of attitudinal meanings. Secondly, the author also concludes the major differences in the two inaugural addresses. Compared with Obama, President Roosevelt tended to adopt more positive Affect in terms of Security and positive Judgment in terms of capacity; while compared with Roosevelt, President Obama tended to employ more negative Judgment in terms of Propriety and negative Appreciation in terms of Valuation. The major factors causing these differences are related to the social situation and background according to the analysis.