A Study Of Interpersonal Grammatical Metaphors In Weekly Radio Speeches

According to Halliday (1985), systemic functional grammar can provide a theoretical framework for discourse analysis due to its multi-level and multi-function properties. The study of interpersonal metaphors can trigger a comprehensive understanding and analysis of a text, which has attracted scholars'attention both at home and abroad. However, scant attention has been paid to the application of interpersonal grammatical metaphor to the study of political discourse. Most research seems to be concerned with the study of its classification and ways of judgment. The interpersonal grammatical metaphor has not received enough importance. However, some scholars are beginning to show their interest in researching interpersonal grammatical metaphors in discourse, such as Fan Wenfang (2000), Chang Chenguang (2001). Some graduate students are also beginning to investigate the functions of interpersonal grammatical metaphors in specific discourse.Owing to the important roles interpersonal grammatical metaphors play in discourse, it seems to be of great value to probe into political discourse in terms of this aspect. The present study is an attempt to analyze American president Obama's weekly radio speeches, and provide English learners with deeper insights into interpersonal grammatical metaphors and their functions in helping the President realize communicative purposes. Two research questions are formulated in this thesis:1. the occurrence and frequency of interpersonal grammatical metaphors in Obama's weekly radio speeches; 2. the functions of interpersonal grammatical metaphors in the political discourse.The study is carried out on the basis of Halliday's model of interpersonal grammatical metaphor. Thirty samples are downloaded from www.putclub.com, dated from January 24,2009, to August 22,2009. Through quantitative analysis, the occurrence and frequency of the interpersonal metaphors in this corpus are counted and compared. Moreover, through qualitative analysis, the author probes into the application of interpersonal grammatical metaphors by examining their functions in helping the President achieve his communicative goals.The major findings are summarized as follows:First, through quantitative analysis, it is found that the speaker in weekly radio speeches achieves his communicative purposes by tactically adopting a great number of metaphors of mood or metaphors of modality. Second, a lot of statements clarifying the policies are realized by the "let me" structure of imperative mood to show the speaker's authoritativeness as a president. Metaphors of mood issuing commands with declarative mood are also widely used to shorten the distance between the President and the audience so as to gain their understanding and support. Some statements realized by interrogative mood are adopted to convey the speaker's implications or form an atmosphere of intercommunication, depending on the situation. In addition, there are few questions realized by declarative mood to show the speaker's respect to the audience with the final goal of establishing a cooperative relationship with the audience and getting their support. Third, in weekly radio speeches, a large number of explicit subjective metaphors of modality are adopted to emphasize the speaker's strong belief so as to present the President's good image of being confident and being willing to take responsibility. By contrast, explicit objective metaphors of modality and nominalization are adopted to disguise the source of the modality so that the speaker can shirk the responsibility of his personal judgment. At the same time, the speaker uses many explicit subjective metaphors of modality to express his uncertainty in an attempt to show his caution and carefulness.These findings bear significant pedagogical implications. The author proposes that this study enables us to have a better understanding of how interpersonal metaphors work in weekly radio speeches; additionally, it will facilitate the teaching of advanced listening and speaking and improving non-native English learners'listening, speaking and writing so that they can develop their communicative competence more effectively.