A Comparative Study Of Metadiscourse In University Speech Made By Xi Jinping And Obama From The Perspective Of Systemic Functional Linguistics

Systemic Functional Linguistics(SFL)was proposed by J.R.Firth including “Systemic Grammar” and “Functional grammar”.Based on Firth’s theory,M.A.K.Halliday developed SFL and proposed that language has three metafunctions,which are ideational metafunction,interpersonal metafunction and textual metafunction.Based on Halliday’s interpersonal function and textual function,Zellig Harris(1959),proposed interpersonal metadiscourse model,which has been widely applied in discourse analysis since metadiscourse helps the readers master the frame of the text and build an interactional relationship among the readers,texts and speakers.At present,metadiscourse has been studied in many types of texts,such as compositions,business letters,academic papers and political speech,etc.But the study of metadiscourse in speech genre is rare,especially the comparative study of university speech between Chinese and English speech.Therefore,this thesis will do a comparative analysis of university speech made by Chairman Xi Jinping and President Obama from the perspective of SFL.This thesis will adopt Hyland’s(2005)interpersonal metadiscourse model as theoretical foundation to answer the following questions,which are:1)What are the distributions and the features of metadiscourse in the university speeeh made by Obama?2)What are the distributions and the features of metadiscourse in the university speeeh made by Xi Jinping?3)What are the similarities and differences between Obama and Xi Jinping’s university speech from the perspective of Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics(SFL)?The materials of this thesis are 12 university speeches,among which six are selected from Obama’s university speech and six from Xi Jinping’s university speech.Firstly,this research calculates the metadiscourse distribution and uses Chi-square to analyze the entire metadiscourse distribution,differences and similarities,application in interactive and interactional metadiscourse as well as the distribution of the subcategories of interactional and interactive metadiscourse,which can illustrate how metadiscourse represents interpersonal meaning and textual meaning in specific contextThe experimental results indicate that:firstly,in XSC,boosters,self mentions,and attitude markers rank the first three metadiscourse resources,since Xi Jinping uses boosters to show his speech style and he has much confidence in his strategies and foreign policies,and strengthens the listeners’confidence.The adoption of self mentions“我”can show Xi Jinping’s feelings and reduce the distance between the speaker and the audiences,which indicates the Xi Jinping’s university speech language style.Attitude markers,such as“诚恳”,“高兴”,indicate Xi Jinping expresses friendly attitude to the audience,which helps XiJinping establish good relationship between them and guide the audience to engage in the speech.It also shows Xi Jinping’s mild and moving tone.Secondly,the experimental results show self mentions,transitions,and engagement markers are the most frequently used metadiscourse in OSC,because the adoption of self mentions,such as “I”,“me”,reduces the psychological dictances between Obama and the audience,which enables the listeners to accept the speaker’s viewpoints easily and indicates Obama has a good interaction with the audience.Obama uses transitions,such as “and”,“so”,“but”,to make the speech cohesion and connect the causive between sentences,which indicates the character of English language.Obama adopts Engagement,such as “you” to engage the students to the speech and put the speaker and the listeners to the equal position,which not only builds a good interpersonal relationship between the listeners and the speaker,but also has a positive interaction.Thirdly,the experimental results indicate metadiscourses are widely distributed in OSC and XSC,and the metadiscourse in OSC occurs more than that in XSC.Meanwhile,the subcategories of interactive and interactional metadiscourse in two corpora are much higher than interactive metadiscourse.In addition,according to chi-square,there’s a significant difference in interactional and interactive metadiscourse and subcategory of two corpora.Moreover,in XSC,boosters,self mentions,and attitude markers rank the first three metadiscourse resources,whereas in OSC,self mentions,transitions,and engagement markers rank the first three metadiscourse.This reaearch is of significance theoretically and practically in metadiscourse application.Theoretically,this thesis enriches the analysis of metadiscourse between Chinese and English university speech,which highlights the future study.Practically,this thesis helps teachers and students master the distribution,similarities and differences of metadiscourse in Chinese and English university speech,as well as the application of metadiscourse in English and Chinese,which can help them well accept the content of the university speech.