A Functional Stylistic Analysis Of Obama’s Inaugural Addresses

Stylistics is a discipline which uses the theories and methods of linguistics to analyze styles of texts. It aims to reveal the effects and functions of language use through a thorough analysis of language characteristics. In some sense, there is a parasitic relationship between stylistics and linguistics. The development of new linguistic theories often brings to new branches of stylistics. Functional stylistics is an important branch of stylistics and it is based on the theory of Systemic Functional Grammar, set by M. A. K. Halliday. It emphasizes the relations between texts and situational context and it guides people to analyze texts’ styles from social contexts or contexts beyond texts. Political public speaking is an important cultural custom in western countries. Statesmen express their political views and principles and attitudes towards other countries in campaign speeches, inauguration speeches, government work reports, meeting debates, political rally speeches, diplomatic speeches, military speeches and so on. By reading or listening to political speeches readers or listeners have a better understanding of speakers’presentation styles, social cultures, traditional customs, historical backgrounds and conscious ideologies. Inauguration speaking is a very important kind of public speaking in America, because it is made by the newest president on his inauguration day to inform the masses of his policies and principles, which concerns the masses’first impression on him. As the first black president of America, Barack Obama has excellent public speaking ability which plays an important role in his political success. Based on the theory of systemic functional grammar, this thesis aims to analyze the stylistic characteristics of Obama’s two inaugural speeches from the perspective of functional stylistics.This thesis can be divided into six chapters. The first chapter is introduction, mainly introduces the research background, research significance, research methodology and research questions. The second chapter is literature review, in this chapter the author firstly discusses the definition and theory foundation of functional stylistics, mainly analyzes researches from the functional stylistics by scholars at home and abroad, and then introduces former scholars’researches concerning public speaking. The third chapter is theoretical framework, mainly introduces the framework of functional stylistics:Halliday’s three metafunctions of language:ideational function, textual function and interpersonal function. The fourth chapter is the major concern of this thesis which analyzes the ideational function of the data from the perspective of transitivity, the interpersonal function of the data from the perspective of tense, mood and modality, the textual function of the data from the perspective of thematic system and cohesive devices. The fifth chapter is conclusion in which major findings and shortcomings of this thesis are listed.The results are as following:in terms of ideational metafunction the author mainly conducts the research from the perspective of transitivity, the results show that Obama employs six processes in two speeches, and among these speeches material process and relational process are used most frequently. In terms of interpersonal metafunction, the author mainly conducts the research from the perspectives of mood, modality, tense and personal pronouns as subject. The results find that present tense, declarative clauses and first personal pronouns are most frequently used. High, median and low model values are skillfully used in two speeches to make them more persuasive, encouraging, and convincing. In terms of textual metafunction, the author mainly conducts the research from the perspectives of thematic system and cohesive device. The results show that simple theme and unmarked theme are predominant in two speeches, besides the speaker employs different cohesive devices to make the speeches smooth and coherent, among which conference, repetition and conjunction are most frequently used.