An Analysis Of Theme And Thematic Progression In English Political Speeches

Obama, as the first black president of USA, can skillfully deliver inspiring speeches to win support in political speeches. His inaugural speeches have been used as the studying object in many Chinese thesis, while his weekly radio speeches are paid little attention to. In this thesis, twenty Obama’s weekly radio speeches are randomly chosen as data in order to summarize textual features of political speeches and provide some suggestions on how to arrange a speech. Besides, the theoretical framework of this thesis is the theories of thematic structure and thematic progression.Since1844, the theory of themes has been developed rapidly. And Halliday makes great contributions in developing the theory of thematic structure. Later, Danes complements the theory by putting forward the concept of thematic progression, who makes great contributions to the development of the theory of textual function. In this thesis, Halliday’s theories about thematic structure and Huang Guowen’s theory about thematic progression are employed to make an analysis on twenty randomly-selected samples of Obama’s weekly radio speeches. The major findings are as follows:(1)Simple themes are used most frequently compared to multiple themes and clausal themes. With regard to simple themes, pronouns takes a higher percentage as simple themes than any other elements. With regard to pronouns,"we" and "I" are used most frequently, but "you" is employed the least. In multiple themes, topical themes are used much more than textual themes and interpersonal themes. As for unmarked themes are employed more than marked themes in President Obama’s weekly radio speeches. (2)In Obama’s speeches, parallel thematic progression, linear thematic progression and concentrated thematic progression are more frequently used than crossing thematic progression, alternating thematic progression and derived thematic progression.The significance of the research is to test the practicality of theories of thematic structure and thematic progression and to analyze Obama’s weekly radio speeches from a different angle. Besides, after understanding the textual features of political speech, the audience can better comprehend political speech and the speaker can better prepare the speech.