A Discourse Analysis Of Political Speeches From The Perspective Of Appraisal Theory

A political speech aims to express a position,elucidate viewpoints and publicize advocacy on domestic affairs and diplomatic relationships,which play a vital role in political life.The State of Union Address,as part of the administrative program of the US government,is a typical representation of political speeches,which involves a president's attitudes and standpoint on significant issues both domestic and abroad as well as policies and measures the government plans to take.Appraisal Theory,proposed by James Robert Martin and his colleagues,supplements and develops interpersonal function in System Function Grammar.In public speeches,especially political speeches,the speaker employs appraisal resources to explicate his attitudes towards people and affairs as well as the intensity degree of attitude and engagement.Appraisal Theory can be classified into three systems,i.e.attitude,engagement and graduation;it has widely been applied to news,political speeches and advertisements.The present study chooses Barack Hussein Obama's 2016 State of Union Address as corpus.Both quantitative and qualitative approaches are adopted in this study.From the perspective of Appraisal Theory,the present study makes an attempt to explore the distribution and frequency of different appraisal resources and reveal how President Obama used different appraisal resources to eliminate divergence,convey positive meaning,rebuild confidence and achieve solidarity,thus fulfilling political purposes.Through statistical data and comprehensive analysis of the selected speech,the present study finds that among three sub-systems of Appraisal Theory,attitude resources are most widely adopted compared with engagement and graduation resources.President Obama employs attitude resources to express his emotion,judgment and evaluation of things.Through analysis and discussion,the author of the present research finds that judgement resources within the attitude system take up the largest proportion while the appreciation resources occupy the lowest percentage.The judgement resources are mainly used to admire the excellent quality of Americans and to show the capacity and accomplishment of US government.As for engagement system,dialogue contraction far outnumbers dialogue expansion.Deny strategy is most frequently used by President Obama to show the president's authority and status,as well as explicate his views and standpoint towards certain issues.With regard to dialogue expansion,entertain strategies are adopted more frequently by President Obama to give space for alternative views in an attempt to unite those people who hold different viewpoints.In terms of graduation system,force strategy is overwhelmingly higher than focus.Force resources are employed by President Obama to strengthen the intensity degree of his attitude and engagementin order to make the speech more objective.Through the application of appraisal resources,President Obama achieves three purposes in 2016 State of Union Address.Firstly,the intention of manipulating listeners' emotions and attitudes are revealed.Secondly,aligning with audience,eliminating divergences and achieving solidarity are fulfilled.Thirdly,a more united American political circle and a more harmonious society are constructed.The present study provides both theoretical and practical significance to the analysis of political speeches,which not only verifies and broadens the Appraisal Theory,but also contributes to helping listeners have deeper understandings of political speeches and learn to employ appraisal resources to express their own attitudes.In addition,the findings of the study provide reference to language teaching and translation of political speeches.