An Analysis Of Trump's Political Speeches In The 2016 American Presidential Campaign From The Perspective Of The Appraisal Theory

The Appraisal Theory was put forward by James Martin in the nineties of the twentieth century and had already become a framework for studying interpersonal meaning in Systemic Functional Linguistics.The theory is about the linguistic resources.Based on it,particular inter-subjective and ultimately ideological positions can be expressed,negotiated and naturalized by texts or speakers.On the basis of systemic functional linguistics,the theory particularly focuses on the language of appraisal,attitude and emotion within this broad scope.It is composed of three interacting domains,namely,Attitude,Engagement and Graduation.The research indicates that the Appraisal Theory can efficiently help to explore the language user's attitude,viewpoint and standpoint systemically in achieving the persuasive effect.Since the appearance of the theory,many scholars have been interested in the theory and have used it to analyze advertisements,news,oral English in teaching and other kinds of texts.However,previous studies are mainly in political and stylistic areas,and few are conducted from linguistics,and studies on presidential addresses are also very few.American presidential speeches are very important and have attracted the attention of political scientists,historians and many linguists as well.The purpose of the thesis is to analyze Trump's five speeches in the American presidential campaign in 2016 within the framework of Martin's the Appraisal Theory which is concerned with the linguistic formulations in conveying emotions and opinions,esp.how writers/speakers align their personae with the stance of others,and how they manipulate their writing/speaking to convey attitude and conviction in their propositions.