An Analysis Of American President Donald Trump’s Speeches In The Weekly Address From The Perspective Of Interpersonal Function

American Presidents’ Weekly Address is a common practice that most American presidents will follow.Almost every aspect of America will be covered,including politics,economy,culture,reform,innovation,health and medical treatment,employment and all the other topics related to the welfare of American people.American Presidents’ Weekly Address has a long history and a great number of researches have been conducted by scholars both abroad and at home.They emphasize different aspects of presidential speeches,employ different approaches and gain different research results.With more and more scholars taking interest in presidential speeches,they do researches on speeches of American presidents from different aspects based on different theories.This thesis analyses 24 pieces of American President Donald Trump’s Weekly Address through qualitative and quantitative analyses from the perspective of Interpersonal Function based on Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar.The thesis aims to answer the following three questions:(1)How is Interpersonal Function realized through Mood in Trump’s Weekly Address?(2)How is the Interpersonal Function realized through Modality?(3)How is the Interpersonal Function realized through Personal Pronoun?It’s found that the use of mood,modality and personal pronouns in the selected data shares some similarities with the use of mood,modality and personal pronouns in other presidents’ speeches.It shows that though presidents have different background,come from different classes,or have different working experiences,once they become Presidents of America,their political speeches have the same goal — to serve presidentship and Americans.The significance of this research is mainly manifested in two aspects.Theoretically,the paper enriches the research area of interpersonal function.Practically,this thesis could help people know more about how interpersonal function is realized,how presidents’ political goals are achieved,and know more about the speaking styles of Donald Trump.