A Comparison Of Interpersonal Function Between British Royal And British Government Political Speeches With Corresponding English-Chinese Interpretation Strategies

Since ancient times, political speeches have been an important tool for government leaders to deliver policies and gain popularity. This essay intends to study the difference of interpersonal function between British royal political speeches and governmental political speeches through studying two typical speeches:Queen Elizabeth’s2013Christmas Message and British Prime Minister David Cameron’s2014New Year Message. The essay adopts the theory of the Flexibility of English-Chinese interpretation and the Functional Equivalence. According to statistics, there are some major differences. The Christmas Message is elegant whose modality fluctuates greater and whose content is more diverse and interesting, like intelligent essays. The New Year Speech is solemn whose modality is neutral and whose content is about governmental affairs, a typical encouraging political speech. So the corresponding interpretation strategies are:choose appropriate words and rhetorical devices according to the identity and social position of the speaker; speculate the speaker’s mind reasonably and use the tone meeting his/her expectation, reflecting on modal verbs; speculate reasonably the background knowledge and comprehensive ability of the audience and adopt flexible interpretation methods.