A Comparative Analysis Of Attitudinal Meanings In The Campaign Remarks Of Donald Trump And Hillary Clinton

Since Donald Trump's inauguration of president of the United States,people from all walks of life have conducted various analyses on how Trump defeated Hillary Clinton.Among those factors,the campaign speech,as an important battleground in this four-year-election,plays a vital role in the election results.As an important extension of the interpersonal function in systemic functional grammar,appraisal theory shows how the speakers use the language for evaluation,role constructing and maintaining harmonious interpersonal relations,which provides an important theoretical framework for research on Trump and Hillary's campaign remarks.This thesis mainly adopts the qualitative and quantitative methodologies to analyze the attitude resources in the 2016 American presidential campaign remarks.It deals with how the two candidates express their attitudinal resources in political remarks and search for the similarities and differences in the exposure of political intention from the perspective of affect,appreciation and judgment.Thus,the possible reasons would be explored possibly.Through the analysis and research,we find that:1.In the affect resources,Trump mainly uses a large number of un/happiness lexes to express his emotion of attitude.Hillary achieves the same goal through more in/security words.2.For the appreciation and judgement resources,the two candidates are inclined to use positive words to promote their decision-making and team capacity,but there are not many descriptions of negative aspects.3.Hillary Clinton has a more average distribution than Donald Trump in affect,appreciation,and judgment dimensions while Donald Trump has a highest percentage of judgment resources.In this way,Donald Trump inclines to use more judgment resources to express his attitude.By the detailed analysis of specific examples,we can see that: Hillary uses reasonable language and her abundant political experience with an average statistics of attitude meanings so as to create a grim and objective image of politician,which is extremely easy for her to beat those common opponents;Through positive and bold criticism and seemingly crazy acts,Trump gives the public an image with no reservation and no disguise,which forms a strong contrast with Hillary's dull and bureaucratic style.When facing the choice between an elite model and a deviant who dares to touch the "politically correct",Americans will be much unsure about their vote as a result.The thesis aims to find out how Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton express their attitudinal resources and their differences through appraisal theory,which provides the enlightment and the reference to the study on interpersonal and public discourse.