A Contrastive Study On The Appraisal Resources In The Campaign Speeches By Donald Trump And Hillary Clinton

In this paper,20 campaign speeches delivered by Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton(10 by either of them)are analyzed and compared from the perspective of attitude,engagement and graduation within the research framework of Appraisal Theory.The purpose of this research is to reveal the similarities and differences in the use of appraisal resources in Donald Trump’s and Hillary Clinton’s speeches,and to interpret what kind of relationships they intend to construct between them and other participants by using these appraisal resources in order to align the audience and achieve their political goals.The research results are as follows:Firstly,in terms of characteristics of the distribution of appraisal resources in Trump’s and Hillary’s campaign speeches,as shown in our statistics,the number of the attitude resources,engagement resources and graduation resources contained in Trump’s speeches is 624,289 and 432 respectively.When it comes to Hillary’s speeches,the attitude resources take 446,the engagement resources are 207 and lastly the graduation resources are 321.Secondly,as for the similarities and differences between the use of appraisal resources in Trump’s and Hillary’s campaign speeches,our statistics show that there exist not many significant differences between them.In terms of attitude,the two candidates have essential differences on the employment of attitude resources.Trump uses more judgment resources(accounting for 59.45%)to judge other politicians’ policies,either to criticize or to appreciate someone.While Hillary uses more affect resources(up to 42.60%)to express her inner world and reach her audience in emotion.In addition,Trump uses more negative resources(58.97%)to directly show his dissatisfaction with the government and some policies made by them,such as immigrant and tax policies,while Hillary chooses more positive resources(72.20%)to glorify the American;in terms of engagement,Trump’s use of monogloss is64.71%,and the use of heterogloss is 35.29%.As for Hillary,the former accounts for51.69%,and the latter,48.31%,which demonstrates that Trump is good at presenting his ideas and firm stances;in terms of the graduation system,both Trump and Hillaryuse far more words on force than on focus.What is more,they use intensification force more,which signifies that they can both catch the listeners’ attraction and narrow the distance between them,thus striking a chord.Thirdly,in order to align themselves with the audience,both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton take certain strategies to achieve their political goals under the appraisal resources in their campaign speeches.In terms of attitude,Trump uses more negative judgement resources to condemn his opponent and the government directly whereas Hillary uses more positive judgement resources to make the audience form a grand image of the country and the government.Trump tries to convince his audience by using more monogloss and dialogic contraction in terms of engagement,while Hilary intends to express herself via using dialogic expansion;in terms of graduation,Trump uses more acute resources to intensify his attitude while Hilary uses tenderer resources to make her views less clear.Through using different strategies,both Trump and Hilary intend to win the consent from their target audience and thereby realize their own goals.