Discourse Analysis Of Nobel Winners’ Speeches In Literature From The Perspective Of Information Structure

Based on the Information structure, this thesis studies realize of textual function in NobelPrize Winners’ speeches in Literature. The purpose of this research is to find the application ofInformation structure in these speeches. The features of information distribution are expectedto help the understanding of speeches to English learners and give some inspiration to Englishteachers.Halliday’ Systemic Functional Grammar is the theory for analysis of Information structurein this thesis. Information structure is the organization model of Given and New information inthe course of information transmission. Theme is the starting point of information, while rhemeis the rest part of the sentence. With themes and rhemes among different sentences progressingin certain patterns, the patterns reflect the distribution of information. Information focus is theprominent part in a sentence and it can be marked out by some focus devices.In this thesis, ten Nobel Prize Winners’ speeches in Literature are collected as the data foranalysis. The quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis are employed to find thedistributions of Information structure in data. The features of Information structure in speechesare, firstly, the speeches tend to use simple themes, consisting of nominal groups, adverbialgroup or prepositional phrase. The frequency of multiple theme is less than simple theme. Theclausal theme is far less than the other two theme types. In markedness of theme, the unmarkedtheme is the first choice of the speakers. Secondly, as to thematic progression patterns, thecontinuous development pattern and constant development pattern appear far more than theother patterns. In Information focus analysis, lexical device is used more than syntactic deviceto mark the Information focus.The meaning of such research is to apply Information structure into discourse analysis inNobel Prize Winner’s speech in Literature, other than the traditional approach like rhetoric. Italso has some practical value for English learners, to have a better understanding of speechesby knowing the features of them. For English teachers, it may instruct them to help students toimprove the method of writing.