A Functional Stylistic Analysis Of American President Obama's Campaign Speeches

Public speaking is an art of oral expression and an ideal means of social communication. With the development of society and the improvement of science and technology, the important social functions of public speeches are highly valued in every aspects of our society. During the process of the U.S. presidential election of 2008, Obama created a magical and fascinating legend. His infectious language and exquisite speaking skills make a crucial contribution to his success and help him become the new president of America.In this thesis, ten speeches delivered during the process of presidential campaign are selected as the studying material. The analysis is carried out from the perspective of register and three metafunctions, namely the ideational, interpersonal and textual metafunction within the framework of functional stylistics in order to discover his personal style demonstrated in his speeches by studying the stylistic features of his speeches and reveal what linguistic devices contribute to the realization of his purposes.The results of the study are as follows. Firstly, In order to convey his policies and ideas, Obama frequently uses the material process, relational process and metal process,but he seldom uses the verbal, existential and behavioral process. Secondly, for the purpose of realizing the function of persuading, he pays more attention to the choice of words and the flexible use of tenses. For example, he tends to choose'we'as the Subject of the clauses in his speeches to shorten the distance between himself and his listeners. The present tense is frequently employed, which is followed by the past tense. The present tense makes the information he delivered sounds reliable. The past tense is mainly used to bridge the past and the present and to enhance the contrast between them. The future tense, which shares only a small proportion, is chiefly employed to elaborate his political view. In addition, the median and low value modal operators are constantly appeared in his speeches to help him establish an amiable image. Lastly, as far as the textual function is concerned, the unmarked Theme is constantly employed to make his speeches easy to be understood. In terms of the patterns of thematic progression, the parallel and linear patterns are the most frequently used ones. He uses various patterns of thematic progression to make his speeches coherent in content and variegated in structure. There are five chapters in this thesis. The first chapter briefly introduces the purpose and significance of the research, elaborates the analysis method and the process of data collection and raises the research questions. In chapter two, the previous studies on public speaking and functional stylistics are reviewed and the feasibility of the study is pointed out. Chapter three focuses on the theoretical basis of this thesis. Chapter four is the main part of this thesis. In this chapter, the field, tenor and mode of these sample speeches are analyzed first and foremost to investigate the topics of these speeches, the relationship between the addresser and his listeners and the features of the text organization. After that, a detailed analysis, illustration and evaluation on the linguistic devices that help realize the ideational, interpersonal and textual metafunction of the speeches are carried out. Chapter five concludes the whole research. In the first part, the major stylistic features of these sample speeches are summarized. Next, it points out the limitations of the research and puts forward some suggestions for the further study.