An Analysis Of TED Speeches With Cultural Communication Tags From The Perspective Of Ideational Function

Systemic functional grammar is a linguistic theory being widely used inanalyzing the features of language. Meta-function theory even reveals the deepmeaning and various functions of language as a social phenomenon. The21stcenturyis an era of information. Because of its convenience, the Internet becomes one of themost important channels for information dissemination. TED speeches are verypopular on the Internet in recent years. TED speeches are those delivered by greatminds and men of action from all around the world. The speakers share experienceabout their beloved careers, aiming at changing the world with inspiring ideas. Thelinguistic features in TED speeches are supposed to be revealed from the perspectiveof systemic functional linguistics in the research.Ideational function in systemic functional linguistics is chosen as the theoreticalstructure and cultural communication speeches in TED as the research object in thethesis. The analysis is made from the perspective of ideational function, mainlyfocusing on the transitivity system and voice system. To be specific, the researchelements include: process, participant, active voice, passive voice and middle voice.The analysis is conducted as follows: first, each linguistic feature (process, participant,voice) is labeled to those clauses of17sample speeches. After being coded, data ofthose linguistic features are obtained, showing the times of occurrence and relativefrequencies. The average number of the frequencies in those17sample speechesreveals the distribution of each linguistic feature in cultural communication speeches.And then speech samples will be analyzed qualitatively using the theory of ideationalfunction so as to find out the function and significance of each linguistic feature.Quantitative and qualitative methods have been adopted in the analysis, making thefindings considerably reliable.Some findings have been derived in this research:1) material process, relationalprocess and mental process are major process types and verbal process, behavioralprocess and existential process are minor process types;2) The frequencies of “I-my-me”,“you-your” and “we-our-us” are similar. Through those participants thespeaker relates closely to audiences.3) The frequency of active voice is the highest,followed by passive voice and middle voice. The speech is developed in the form ofstory-telling. The emphasis is to share personal experience.