An Analysis On Barack Obama's Inaugural Address From The Perspective Of Appraisal Systems

This thesis intends to analyze Barack Obama's inaugural address by dint of Appraisal Theory, which is first proposed by systemic-functional linguist J. R. Martin in the early 1990s. The thesis analyzes how Obama constructs the audience, negotiates the relation of alignment/disalignment and establishes solidarity with the audience with the help of UAM CorpusTool. Through the analysis of the corpus, the unique features of Obama's inaugural address will be found. In order to make the analysis more objective, qualitative research and quantitative research will both be done. By dint of the study, there are a lot of Appraisal resources in Obama's inaugural address and Attitudinal resources account for more than a half for the emotion is the most powerful persuasion. Without emotion, the language will be dull and listless. When referring to American founding fathers and the American people, positive evaluations are used whereas, when referring to the Bush administration and the current situation of America, negative ones account for more. And among the Attitudinal resources, explicit evaluations are much more than implicit ones. By taking advantage of these Attitudinal resources, Obama successfully moves the audience, negotiates the relationship of alignment/disalignment and establishes solidarity with them.