A Study On State Of The Union Addresses From The Perspective Of Burke’s Identification Theory

State of the Union Address is a kind of speech annually delivered to the Congress by the president of the United States of America which is important for the U.S. presidents to win the support from the Congress and the American people. Hence the language of State of the Union Addresses is subtle and tactful which is worth studying from the perspective of linguistics. However, it hasn’t drawn enough attention in the field of linguistics. There are only a few scholars studying on State of the Union Addresses from the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics and Cognitive Linguistics, or on some kind of linguistic phenomenon from Pragmatics. This thesis attempts to do a systematic study on State of the Union Addresses from the perspective of Kenneth Burke’s Identification Theory.In terms of the methodology, this thesis adopts both qualitative and quantitative analysis. The author chooses ten American presidents from1963to2012, and selects one piece from each president’s State of the Union Addresses as the data. There are ten pieces in all. First this thesis analyzes the rhetorical situation of State of the Union Addresses. Then it studies identification strategies used in these addresses from the aspects of rhetorical content and rhetorical form. It also explores how to make the addresser and the addressee identify with each other and finally achieve the goals by adopting these strategies. Meanwhile, it also counts the distributive frequency of these strategies.Based on this study, the author finds that due to the rhetorical situation of State of the Union Addresses, it is necessary and important for the American presidents to adopt identification strategies in the addresses.In order to achieve identification, American presidents mainly adopt these strategies—identification via sympathy, antithesis and inaccuracy, and conventional form, repetitive form, progressive form, and figurative form. Presidents achieve identification via sympathy from four aspects which are identification in needs, identification in common values, emotional states and identification in ethics. When presidents declare some negative affairs or harmful things to the people and the nation, they use identification via antithesis. Identification via inaccuracy mainly resorts to the first person plural forms and some words full of praise and affirmation to unite the addressees. All the State of the Union Addresses comply with conventional form. Progressive form is used to lead people to make decisions as the same as the president’s by conforming to people’s modes of thinking. Repetitive form is used to emphasize some affairs and policies. In terms of figurative forms, there are three figures of speech mainly used in State of the Union Addresses which are repetition, parallelism and contrast. Through quantitative analysis, it finds that identification via sympathy and identification via figurative form are two strategies used most by the presidents. The frequencies are82%and53%respectively.This thesis aims to help people better interpret State of the Union Addresses. It provides some meaningful evidences for the application of Kenneth Burke’s Identification Theory. Meanwhile, the explanatory significance of this theory is also strengthened. This study is also meaningful both in language teaching and in language learning.