A Comparative Study Of Modality Between The State Of The Union Address Of America And The Report On The Work Of Government Of China

By convention, national leaders are supposed to issue’State of the Union Address’ or ’Government Work Report’ each year. This type of political discourse is rich in interpersonal meaning, conveying speakers’attitude towards people and public affairs. This thesis is an attempt to make a comparison of the realization of modality employed in the State of the Union Address (SUA) of America and the Report on the Work of Government (RWG) of China within the framework of functional grammar, aiming to discover the underlying socio-cultural factors leading to similarities and differences.Being a chief linguistic means to realize the interpersonal meaning of language, modality plays a critical role in discourse analysis. The expression of modality reveals not only how confident the speaker can appear to be in the information that has been delivered and the degree of willingness or inclination of the speaker to fulfill obligations, but also the power distance among people, especially in political discourse. Through the last few decades, many linguists have tried to define the term’modality’ and provide a systematic account of it from different perspectives. Halliday describes modality from a systemic functional perspective. He emphasizes the semantic analysis of modal expressions on the discourse level, offering substantial analytical methods for a variety of disciplines including discourse analysis.In this thesis, the SUA of America and the RWG of China from2010to2013are chosen as data. The ways of expressing modality in SUA and RWG are identified firstly, and then within the framework of Halliday’s modality system, the differences and similarities between SUA and RWG are analyzed in terms of modal types, modal orientation and modal value. At last, the socio-culture factors that may have influenced the speakers’use of modality are analyzed.Generally speaking, similarities and differences between SUA and RWG both exist in terms of the realization of modality. Firstly, the English modal expressions are much more than Chinese modal expressions. In SUA, modality is realized by modal operators, modal adjuncts, expansion of predicators, modal nouns and performative verbs, while in RWG, it is mainly realized by modal operators, modal adjuncts and declarative sentences of intent. The modal operators constitute a large proportion in both SUA and RWG. Secondly, in terms of the manifestation of modal orientation, modalization is mainly construed subjectively in SUA, but objectively in RWG. However, modulation is realized subjectively both in SUA and RWG. Finally, in SUA, expressions of median value are used most frequently, but in RWG, expressions of high value account for the largest proportion. In this thesis, the researcher applies Halliday’s study of modality to the comparative analysis of political discourse. The findings of the study can contribute to the translation of political discourse.