Queen Elizabeth Ⅱ’s Affinity To People In Her Christmas Speech From The Perspective Of Identification Theory

At the end of 2017,the 91-year-old Queen Elizabeth Ⅱ,delivered a Christmas speech on Christmas Eve as usual.This kind of speech let the audiences closely feel the English style of the royal family and it is at a textbook level in terms of the speaking and professionalism.The Christmas speech is one of those rare occasions when the Queen is able to voice her own views.In addition,its popularity and accessibility make it a natural target for linguistic research.Speech is inseparable with rhetoric.From the perspective of rhetoric,this research adopts the quantitative and qualitative research methods to explore the concrete characteristics of Burke’s identification strategy use in the Queen’s Christmas speech,find out the identification strategy preferences and finally reveal the secret of the successful showing of the Queen’s affinity to the people.Through the use of quantitative analysis,this research aims to show the appearance and frequency of different strategies from levels of content and form,and find the preferences of identification strategy.Then,qualitative analysis is used to verify and interpret the results of quantitative research,and analyze in detail how the use of identification strategies achieves identification in Christmas speech at the same time,in order to explore the reasons for the popularity and success of the Queen’s Christmas speech.At last,on the basis of the above analysis,this research explored how the Queen specifically used the identification strategies to showaffinity to people in order to study Queen Elizabeth Ⅱ’s Christmas speech more comprehensively.This research mainly answered two questions:(1)How does the using of the identification strategies in Queen’s Christmas speech achieve identification with the audiences?(2)How does the identification with audiences specifically show Queen’s affinity to people in the Christmas speech successfully?In this way,this research has found that the widely use of Burke’s identification strategies contributed greatly to the success of the Queen9s Christmas speech and the shaping of the image of affinity to people.Through the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the Queen’s Christmas speech,it was found that Queen Elizabeth Ⅱsuccessfully achieved identification by sympathy,identification by antithesis,identification by inaccuracy,identification by non-verbal symbolic action,identification via conventional form,identification via repetitive form,identification via progressive form and identification via other forms.And it seemed that identification by sympathy was the strategy the Queen liked most.It was found most frequently in Christmas speech every year to achieve identification.At the same time,based on different types of identification strategies,Queen Elizabeth Ⅱ,produced resonance in people and moved them with earnest and sincerity;narrowed the psychological distance and showed closeness to people;shaped a dedicative,meticulous and wise image;inspired the audience and filled their heart full of hope for the new year.With those methods,Queen Elizabeth Ⅱ tried hard to change the prejudice and stereotype that "the royal family is far away from the people" and to win the support and trust of the people.In this way,the Queen successfully showed her affinity to people.