A Systemic Functional Analysis Of Commencement Speech Discourse

As a genre of public speaking, commencement speech plays an important part in campusculture with its unique feature, which is loaded with the schools expectations as well asblessings to the in-coming students. The study of public speaking reached the peak in theearly years of the20th century. It has been analyzed by many linguists from the angle ofTraditional Grammar Analysis, Content Analysis, Stylistic Analysis, Critical Analysis as wellas Systemic Functional Analysis, in which the analytical study of Systemic FunctionalGrammar theory is mainly centered on political speeches, but little attention is attached tocommencement speeches. Therefore, it is meaningful to conduct a study on Englishcommencement speech discourse. Based on the theoretical framework of Systemic FunctionalGrammar proposed by Halliday, this thesis carries out an analytical study of commencementspeeches delivered by political leaders, business elites and cultural celebrities from theperspectives of ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function. The purpose isto examine and compare the features of each functional element in chosen samples and toexplore the commonalities and disparities of each function in commencement speechesdiscourse.The analytical results of ideational function from the perspective of transitivity exhibitthat the most frequently applied types of processes in commencement speech discourse arematerial process, mental process and relational process which are presented in differentsequences. Interpersonal function is achieved by mood and modality. The analysis of moodsystem reveals that declarative clause plays the dominant role in commencement speeches. Inaddition, WH-interrogatives outweigh YES/NO-interrogatives in the frequency distribution.In the utilization of modality system, obligation, probability, inclination and usuality aretentatively studied, in which obligation is used in a large proportion by political leaders andbusiness elites, while probability is greatly employed by cultural celebrities. The analysis ofTextual function indicates that nominal phrases, adverbial phrases and prepositional phrasesare greatly applied in the demonstration of simple theme, while multiple theme is realizedfrom three dimensions, in which ideational element takes up the largest percentage, followedby textual component. The analysis of thematic progression pattern shows that Centralizedpattern occurs least in each analyzed sample and the other patterns are not equally distributed.This thesis not only verifies the feasibility of Halliday s meta-function theory in Englishcommencement speeches, but also replenishes its research range. The results are of greatsignificance to pedagogical relations. By mastering the features of ideational function,interpersonal function and textual function, teaches are able to give comprehensive andsophisticated guidance to students reading, speaking, writing etc. Furthermore, students could be cultivated to further understand different cultures and social conventions in the targetlanguage during cross-culture communication. The results of the study provide feasible andpractical implications for future research.