On The Interpersonal Function Of F. D. Roosevelt’s Inaugural Addresses

In presidential inaugural address, in order to establish a good relationship with theaudience, the speaker has to not only present himself as the highest authority of thecountry but also mitigate his authority to some extent. Due to various features, theinterpersonal meanings of inaugural addresses appear complex. This thesis takesFranklin D. Roosevelt’s four inaugural addresses as object study in order to dig out theinterpersonal meanings and these ways to realize them.Although the interpersonal meanings of a certain discourse from differentperspectives have been studied by many scholars, few of them are from FunctionalGrammar. The interpersonal function indicates that during the speaker and the listener,language is the medium of information exchanges. Therefore, on lexical and sententiallevels, this thesis tries to apply the interpersonal function theory in Halliday’s systemicfunctional grammar to systematically analyze the interpersonal meanings of Franklin D.Roosevelt’s four inaugural addresses. Modality system in Interpersonal Function theoryand Person pronoun system within Halliday’s concept framework are the maintheoretical framework. This thesis uses statistics to make the quantitative and qualitativeanalyses about modal expressions, modal values and personal pronouns in the inauguraladdresses. Through statistics, classification and comparison, it aims to find out how themultiple aims of Roosevelt’s inaugural addresses reflect in his discourses.According to analysis, modalization takes up68.29%and modulation is31.71%. Itcan be seen that Roosevelt offers information more often to express his attitude andoppositions. Expression of probability covers62.60%of all the modality in our samples.Usuality, obligation and inclination are5.69%,18.70%and13.01%. At the same time,he mostly uses median46.43%and low value modality37.5%so as to avoid being toodirect. And16.07%high value modality helps him strengthen his power. In the sameway, personal pronoun choices show the complication of the relation between theaddresser and the addressee. With the help of83.64%the first personal pronoun,2.34% the second personal pronoun and16.02%third personal pronoun, Roosevelt shortens thepsychological distance, which helps him reach his political purposes.The findings of this thesis do good to understanding the language in inauguraladdresses and offer a new perspective of appreciating such kind of discourses. Moreover,Modality system and Person Pronoun system in Halliday’s systemic functional grammarare very scientific, useful and practical tools to probe into the interpersonal meanings ofdiscourses.