An Analysis Of Chinese And American First Lady's Speeches

Peng Liyuan and Michelle Obama,as the First Lady of China and the previous First Lady of U.S.,respectively delivered an English speech on the topic of "the importance of female education" in 2015.Considering the same social role of "First Lady" and approaching presentation time for similar speech topics of "female education",the two speeches attract much attention and thus the selected corpus in this study is comparable and has certain research value.Based on appraisal theory and taken Chinese and American First Lady's speeches as research objects,the thesis presents the following research questions:(1)What appraisal resources are used in the two speeches?How do the speakers achieve their speech purposes by using these appraisal resources?(2)Are there any similarities and differences of using appraisal resources in the two speeches?If there are,what are the similarities and differences?(3)What are the causes for similarities and differences?To answer the above questions,the thesis adopts quantitative and qualitative methods to give a comparative analysis on the selected corpus.The study finds that there are a large number of appraisal resources in the two speeches.Graduation,appreciation,as well as the raise of force occupies the largest proportion;judgment and lower account for the least;the frequency of monogloss and heterogloss are opposite to each other.Therefore,there are many similarities and differences of appraisal resources in Peng Liyuan's and Michelle Obama's speeches.The causes for them are diversified.For example,the similarities of social status and speech topics,the traits of different appraisal resources,the features of speech discourse,the social values and ideologies,female education's development both in China and U.S..