The Research On Interpersonal Function Of Political Speech

Many scholars have studied the interpersonal function of language from different angles for many years in China and abroad.The Systemic Functional Linguistics has centered on the lexico-grammatical study of interpersonal meaning by taking clause as representation which covers a very vast scope in great depth.But it elides the semantics of evaluation.In the area of discourse analysis of interpersonal function in SFL,Appraisal Theory is a complement to SFL and a breakthrough of interpersonal meaning.The application of Appraisal Theory has covered many types of texts such as commercial advertising,news reporting,historical reviews and autobiographies.Political speeches have rarely been included.Therefore,the author applies Holliday's Theory of Interpersonal Function and Martin's Appraisal Theory to explore the reasons behind the realization of interpersonal meaning in Obama's victory speech.Obama's victory speech is a practical example of realizing the interpersonal function of language.He used his impressive and vivid speeches to convince the listeners and change their attitudes.Therefore,Obama's victory speech is selected as the case study.This study is undertaken by the combination of qualitative approach,quantitative approach and case study.Through the comprehensive study of the research data,the qualitative and qualitative analysis,the research can be concluded as followed: In the level of the clause,the author focuses on analyzing the mood,the modality of modal verbs,mood adjuncts,comment adjuncts,and personal subject.Obama applies many indicative mood rather than imperative mood.And in the all model auxiliaries in Obama's victory speech,‘will' takes the high frequency,which shows Obama's confidence and hopes in the future of America.Over the level of the clause,the author analyzes the application of attitude system;engagement system and graduation system in Obama's victory speech.In Obama's victory speech,most of his emotions belong to positive affect which accounts for a large portion---64.5%.Through the research,the paper explores the factors and reasons that successfully causing the result of interpersonal function of language in Obama's victory speech.The limitation of this thesis is that the research data has analyzed by manual census because there is no Obama's victory speech corpus.However,this paper will contribute to the current research of the discourses analysis of English political speech from the perspective of the Appraisal and the construction of a possible model of the discourse analysis of interpersonal meaning to some degree.