The Genre Analysis Of TED Speeches From The Perspective Of Moves And Steps

As a sub-genre of public speaking, TED speeches play a powerful role all over the world. Being a representative of successful public speeches, TED speeches attract a large number of scholars’ attention to make analysis on it from various perspectives. However, few studies take the genre analysis of TED speeches into consideration. To enrich the linguistic studies on TED speeches, this thesis attempts to conduct an analysis at move structure and linguistic features to have a better understanding of the genre of TED speeches. Both qualitative and quantitative methods will be conducted in this research. 30 sample TED speeches from website of www.ted.com are chosen to be analyzed as data to explore the move structure and linguistic features of TED speeches.Based on the analysis, it can be found that the selected TED speeches have the special move structure. Among all the 30 sample TED speeches, there are six moves: greeting the audience(GA),revealing the topic(RT), opening the speech(OS), developing the speech(DS), concluding the speech(CS), expressing the appreciation(EA), in which OS, DS, CS and EA are obligatory moves while GA and RT are optional moves. It can be safe to conclude that nearly all the successful TED speeches include the four obligatory moves and the appearance of the optional moves depends on the speakers’ need and choice.In terms of linguistic features, the findings of this research are as follows: firstly, in terms of modal words choices, modal verbs present the probability, obligation, frequency and inclination of what happens. As far as the modal verbs in TED speeches are concerned, Can is the primary modal verbs employed in the speeches to realize the speakers’ communicative purpose. Secondly, a large number of the first person pronouns used in the speeches can account for the reason of the high frequency of the employed steps of personal experience and appeals and can better explain that why TED speeches are so powerful all over the world and influence millions of the young and the adults to realize the speakers’ communicative purpose. Thus great changes have happened in the spiritual world of the audience and then affect their attitude towards life and activate their actions in the practical world.This study will enrich the research of genre study of TED speeches in research field. The results can be used to guide those who want to take part in English public speaking activities and those who intend to influence the public with speeches. Also the findings of the this research may have somepedagogical implications for public speaking and writing and help the teachers give the students better instruction in public speaking and writing..