A Functional Stylistic Study Of Obama's Speech At Town Hall Meeting In Shanghai

With the newly elected American President Obama's speech at Town Hall Meeting in Shanghai as the target, this thesis makes a thorough and detailed functional stylistic study of it at the lexicogrammatical level. With the statistical analysis as the tool, and through transitivity system analysis, mood and modality analysis, and thematic system analysis, this thesis is intended to explore how Obama achieves his intentions in the speech through the choice of words and grammatical structure.This thesis consists of six chapters.Chapter One gives a general introduction to the aim and significance of this thesis. In Chapter Two, a prominence is given to the previous studies on political public speech and Functional Stylistics. Chapter Three is devoted to the theoretical foundation of this thesis, with its emphasis on Halliday's functional linguistics and the register theory. Chapter Four and Chapter Five are the research focus of the paper. Chapter Four makes a register analysis of Obama's speech, specifically, an analysis of the field, tenor and mode. In Chapter Five, a study is made on the three metafunctions of the speech at the lexicogrammatical level. To begin with, in the aspect of the ideational metafunction, with a statistical analysis of the process types, it is found that this speech is primarily composed of material and relational processes in transitivity. In terms of the interpersonal metafunction, great attention is attached to the speech function analysis, mood structure analysis and modality analysis. It is concluded that most of the clauses in the speech are declarative, the first person pronouns"I"and"we"occur in a large number as subject, the primary temporal operators are mainly in present tense and a certain number of modal operators and other modal elements are also used. From the perspective of the textual metafunction, a thematic system analysis is made, with a conclusion that simple themes, unmarked themes, experiential and textual themes take up the major part.Chapter Six is a conclusion to the thesis, and the limitations of this thesis are also listed here.