An Analysis Of The Interpersonal Function In Obama’s Inaugural Addresses

Owing to growing concern about the research on the interpersonal functions in political speeches, the present study carried out a fairly systematic analysis on Obama’s 2009 and 2013 inaugural addresses in mood, modal operators, personal pronouns and evaluative lexicons.The analysis of mood, modal operators, personal pronouns are largely under the framework of Halliday’s theory on interpersonal function, while the process of evaluative lexicons are based on the developed and improved model by Martin. The study, aided with the software Antconc, conducted both quantitative and qualitative analyses of the above-mentioned four aspects. The posted examples illustrated how the speaker realized interpersonal function through linguistic resources and how the interpersonal function reflected can assist the speaker to achieve his objectives in political speeches.The research findings revealed that in Obama’s two inaugural addresses, interpersonal function was identified to be fulfilled on different levels. As far as mood is concerned, declarative clauses are the most carriers of information, which is followed by imperatives and neither interrogative nor exclamative clauses were found. The abundant use of declarative clauses not only gives much information but spreads his political opinions and plans, whereas imperatives both demonstrated the speaker’s authoritativeness, mitigated the power imposed on the audience and established a harmonious relationship between them by means of the structures introduced by "let". As for modality, surpassing the low and high value modal operators, medium value modal operators rank the first in frequency. Because of their less aggressive and more certain implication, the speaker could allocate modal operators of medium value to maintain his supreme status, arouse the audience’s passion and shorten the distance between the speaker and the audience. Besides, the analysis of the first, second and third person pronouns also proved that purposeful choice of words also showed the speaker’s strategies to realize interpersonal function. The use of "we" effectively curtailed the distance in between, transforming the speaker’s political views and even demands into the objectives to be jointly fulfilled. The analysis of evaluative nouns and adjectives vividly exhibited how the speaker expressed his emotions, made judgments and evaluations.The present study has revealed the linguistic resources through which the interpersonal function is realized in Obama’s two inaugural addresses, expecting to contribute to related literature and stimulate further in-depth studies on this topic.