Transitivity Analysis Of Michelle Obama's Speeches On Campus From The Perspective Of Systemic Functional Grammar

Michelle Obama is the wife of the 44th American president Barack Obama.She's not only Obama's wife,but also his strong backup force in his political career.The speeches she delivered arouse wide attention and can touch the hearts of the audience.She has a great impact on political diplomacy,education,culture and vogue,etc.The study on Michelle's addresses can reveal the relations between language and its meaning which can help the researchers get a better understanding of the speeches conveyed.Systemic Functional Grammar has been considered as one of the most prominent and effective linguistic theories for discourse analysis and M.A.K.Halliday is the main representative.According to Halliday,language can be divided into three meta-functions which are ideational,interpersonal and textual meta-function.Transitivity is an important manifestation of ideational meta-function.Michelle Obama's seventeen speeches on campus are chosen as the research material which include not only the ones addressed in universities and high schools but also those delivered in the U.S.A.and in China which make the study more convincing.Both qualitative and quantitative methods are adopted complementarily in this study to explore how transitivity analyses are realized in Michelle Obama's seventeen speeches on education and then find out the characteristics of her speeches and reveal the deep meanings of Michelle's speeches and the speech skills beneath them*.According to the analysis of transitivity of Michelle Obama's speeches,the author finds some distinguished features of Michelle Obama's speeches such as degrading her identity and standing in ordinary people's shoes to express her ideas,focusing of the spirit of dedication,emphasizing the importance of education and encouraging the students to face the difficulties bravely and tap their potential to make their dreams come true,etc.