A Study On Interpersonal Function In English Political Speeches

Interpersonal Function is a term drawn from Halliday's Systemic-Functional Grammar. As one of the three metafunctions, the interpersonal function of language mainly serves to help speakers establish and maintain social relations such as the expression of social roles as well as influence and change the listeners'viewpoints and behaviors. The interpersonal function can be realized through choosing from the lexico-grammatical network, which is through the mood and modality systems. As its nature infers, the interpersonal function might be best demonstrated in the English Political Speeches.For this study, a corpus of public speeches from English public speaking anthologies is designed and built and 20 English Political Speeches were collected as the object samples. Based on the framework of Halliday's Systemic-Functional Grammar, the author adopts both qualitative and quantitative research methods to make a detailed study on the general realization of interpersonal function from the perspectives of mood and modality systems.From the perspective of mood system, the study shows that the declarative mood plays the predominant role and is followed by the imperative and interrogative mood. In political speeches, when the speaker performs the speech role of giving information, declarative mood is widely used to state his or her political beliefs and opinions. Besides, interrogative mood is employed to emphasize the information the speaker wants to convey. When the speaker performs the speech role of demanding action, imperative mood is employed to command and request. Moreover, declarative mood with the overt aim of action demanding is also used. From the perspective of modality system, in terms of modality type, speakers adopt more modulation expressions than modalization ones to convince and persuade the listeners to take actions; in terms of modality value, the modal expressions with median value attached occupy the most proportion in the three scales, followed by the high value and the low value. The speakers'preference of median and high value modal expressions can make the speaking perceived more credible and acceptable. The author expects that the research findings can be of certain value in understanding and appreciating the public speeches. Besides, it can instruct people how to be a good public speaker and an effective communicator in English. Furthermore, it is helpful in teaching English listening, speaking and writing.