Analysis Of English Political Speeches From Functional Stylistic Perspective

Political speech,as the sub-discourse of public speech,plays an extremely important role in political life.With the acceleration of the political and economic integration process in the world,the English political speech has already become an important cultural phenomenon in western society and even in the world,which is an indispensable means of communication on the international stage.In the past,the study about political speeches mainly emphasized the appraisal theory and rhetorical theory structure,focusing on the study of lexical,syntax and phonological level among the texts.However,there are few studies from the perspective of functional grammar.Therefore,based on the theory of Halliday's systemic functional grammar,this thesis systemically analyzes selected speech materials from the view point of the metafunctional theories and register theory.Donald Trump,a republican,as a rare estate tycoon and a outsider in Washington's politburo in the history of the United States,defeats many other rivals and eventually wins the election to be the 45 th president of the United States.Trump's political speech not only expresses his personal political views and attitudes to the audiences,but also has attracted the attention of many scholars at home and abroad as result of his passionate and eloquent speeches,which becomes a focus for linguist research and also a model speech for the people who are keen on delivering speeches.Because of his special political status and extensive influence,undoubtedly,new research materials are provided for political speeches.Therefore,there is a high theoretical significance and important practical significance to study his speech in a detailed way.Trump's address in Gettysburg,victory address,inaugural address and the first congress address have been selected as the research corpus in this study.Qualitative,quantitative and comparative analysis methods are totally covered in this thesis.The author deeply explores the selected speech texts from the perspectives of metafunctional theory and register theory,aiming at exploring the stylistic features of the selected corpora and revealing Trump's unique speech style and language charm.According to the related analysis,the research results can be summarized as the following four points.Firstly,from ideational function perspective,it can befound that the material process is used most frequently in Trump's speech.He uses amounts of specific predicate verbs to objectively express his personal political views and the political policies.In addition,the mental process also accounts for a large proportion in his speeches,which shows that thereare rich psychological activities and personal cognition involved in that while conveying information.Secondly,from the point of view of interpersonal function,it is clear that declarative sentences are often used in Trump speeches,while the use of imperative sentences and interrogative sentences are less used,which is a good way to cover information more objectively and enhance the credibility and persuasiveness in the process of communication.At the same time,the first person pronouns(I/we/our)are used most frequently in his speeches,which can narrow the distance between speaker and the audiences,increase the intimate relationship between them and thus gain more support and trust from the people.Thirdly,from the perspective of discourse function,it can be concluded that the simple theme and the unmarked theme are most frequently used in Trump's speeches.At the same time,the alternate use of cohesive devices including reference,substitution and repetition reflects his flexible use of the sentence structure and strong logic in the organizing of language.Fourthly,as far as the register domain theory is concerned,the topic of the speeches in Trump's four speeches,the role relationship,and the channels for the exchanging of information(spoken)bring various speech effects to different speeches,which can successfully achieve the purpose of language communication.This thesis makes an in-depth analysis of the selected text from the perspective of metafunction and register theories.The author hopes that the results of the above four aspects have a reference value in a certain degree for the related research fields.