Theme And Thematic Progression Pattern Analysis Of Summit Speech

The present study aims to investigate the thematic structures and thematic progression patterns employed in the summit speeches made by President Obama. Summit speeches serve as important ways for international communications. However, linguistic documents on this field are rarely found, so this master dissertation is aimed at conducting the correspondent research through Thematic Progression Patterns from the perspective of discourse coherence, which is probably able to make some contribution to China’s summit speech delivery and interpretation.The present study selects nine of President Obama’s speeches at summit conferences(collected from www.whitehouse.gov). As for the theoretical ground, this thesis first adopts Halliday’s Theme Theory and four simple thematic progression patterns selected from Czech linguist Danes Frantisek’s as well as Xu Shenghuan’s and Zhu Yongsheng’s theories(both based on Dane’s prototype). Within this theoretical framework, the study makes use of qualitative and quantitative research methods and the statistical tool of Microsoft excel is fully applied to answer the following research questions: first, what types of thematic structures are employed in the summit speeches delivered by President Obama? Second, what types of Thematic Progression Patterns are employed in the summit speeches delivered by President Obama? Third, what functions do the thematic structures and Thematic Progression Patternss perform in the summit speeches delivered by President Obama?The major findings of the study are as follows: first, as for the marked and unmarked themes, President Obama is inclined to apply more unmarked Themes than marked Themes, which implies that he prefers to propose the primary concern of his utterance at the point of departure, which is a tactic applied to appeal to the attention of the audience and to guide them along his own ideas, instead of confusing them. Among the marked Themes, the location type(including place and time) constitutes the largest proportion, and the matter type is mostly conveyed through pronouns, both these imply the intention of Obama to convey his ideas in a clear manner. Concerning the simple and multiple Themes, simple Themes are far more frequently employed than multiple themes. This is because lecture is subsumed into the spoken genre, and simple themes enable the audience to understand the speech more easily. Second, President Obama uses an approximately average proportion of constant Theme, constant Rheme and linear progression patterns, all of which constitute clear logic relations across the adjoining sentences/clauses. The constant Theme and constant Rheme patterns are adopted mainly to elaborate and expound the given topic, and the linear pattern is used mainly to add new information to the original item. Third, the Thematic Progression Patterns mainly serve to simplify the configuration of Obama’s utterances, make the audience logically trace the ideas of Obama, convey the assertive attitude of Obama, make everyone aware of the solemnity and importance of the issues presented and finally to fulfill the function of persuasion and encouragement.The study attempts to make some contributions to speech delivery and interpretation for China’s delegates at the summit conferences. However, the study has limitations concerning the amount of the data. More summit speeches delivered by native speakers will make the study more comprehensive and persuasive.