Analysis On Obama’s Speeches From The Perspective Of Interpersonal Metafunction

Obama is the first black president in America, and his re-election also has something to do with his remarkable power of speeches. Thus, it is valuable to explore his language. The articles exploring Obama’s speeches in China usually choose one speech or one aspect of theory to research his speeches, whereas this article will discuss five Obama’s speeches about the fields of economy, diplomacy, war, immigrant and education from the perspective of interpersonal metafunction, and then dig out Obama’s political attitude and language art in his speech. The exploration of Obama’s speeches from the perspective of interpersonal metafunction is conducted at two levels:At the first level, studies of elements of moods and modality in the grammar system of systemic functional linguistics by statistical method, the results being as follows: a great quantity of declarative sentences are used for elaborating Obama’s political stand, imperative sentences and questions to interact with the listeners, and he uses second person plural to narrow psychological distance between speaker and listeners and also it is clearer for the listeners knowing the right and responsibility, and moderate and low modal verbs are used to make his words less absolute.At the second level, studies of elements of engagement, attitude and graduation in the Appraisal System put forward by Martin. the results being as follows: various kinds of appraisal adjectives are used in accordance with the needs of interaction, and Obama repeats the words continuously for increasing his speech power, and adjusts the force according to the political purpose he wants to reach.Based on the analysis of the two levels, we can find the overall strategy of Obama’s speeches, and then providing a blueprint for Obama’s language feature.