An Analysis Of Harvard’s President Faust’s Installation Address From The Perspective Of Interpersonal Function

Systemic Functional Grammar has influenced linguistics greatly in the late20th century. Systemic Functional linguistics, which can be effectively applied in all types of discourses, provides a new perspective in discourse analysis. In recent years the theory of SFL has been widely applied in analysis of different kinds of discourse both spoken and written.Public speech as a spoken discourse has been paid attention to by linguists. The research on public speech focusing on political and diplomatic speech has been conducted, while less on speech of social life. The previous studies on social life are mostly about rhetoric, syntax, stylistics or criticism, and a few of attempts are made in the light of Systemic Grammar. Installation address of university presidents belongs to the social life discourse. This kind of discourses should be paid attention to. This thesis uses SFG as the theory framework to analyze Harvard’s president Faust’s installation address, and aims to analyze how Faust realizes the interpersonal meanings in the mood, tense and modality. At the same time it is expected that the analysis of this discourse will be helpful to understand and appreciate this kind of discourse.This thesis employs both quantitative and qualitative approaches to analyze the installation address. The findings in the thesis are as follows:Faust mainly uses declarative clauses to provide the information of the present, the past and express her own views; she mainly uses the present tense and occasionally the past tense-which depends on Faust’s way of thinking that shows that she turns to history to find the answer to the current problems. And she uses high-value modal operator to strongly express her responsibility and determination, at the same time to call on the audience to take on accountabilities with her. The thesis analyzes the installation address by Faust from the perspective of interpersonal metafunction. Besides, the mood system and the modality system are important devices to realize the interpersonal meanings; the choice in the mood system and the modality system depends on the speaker’s purposes; tense can function in realizing interpersonal meaning in some way. The application of SFG in the discourse indicates that SFG can be effectively applied to analyze this type of social life speech.