A Comparative Study On The Realization Means Of Chinese College Students’ English Speeches Under Different Themes From The Perspective Of Interpersonal Function

From the perspective of interpersonal function,taking the speeches of winners of the21 st Century Cup National College English Speeches as the corpus,with a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods,this paper conducts a comparative analysis on the realization means of speeches under different themes(faith,environmental protection,humanism and technology,cultural conflict and coexistence and opportunity and challenge of globalization)from the three dimensions of mood system,modality system and person system.On Mood System,the following findings are found:(1)On the whole,the proportion of different moods in the five speech themes presents the distribution pattern that declarative mood ranks the highest,interrogative mood ranks second,imperative mood ranks third and exclamatory mood ranks the lowest.However,for the theme of environmental protection,the proportion of imperative mood outnumbers interrogative mood.The reason is that the environmental protection theme uses more imperative mood to appeal the audience to participate in environmental protection.(2)In terms of the proportion of declarative mood,the environmental protection theme is the largest,the humanism and technology theme is the smallest;in terms of the proportion of interrogative mood,the humanism and technology theme is the largest,the environmental protection theme is the smallest.The reason is that the environmental protection theme uses more declarative mood to describe the bad ecological environment so as to provide a foundation for the proposing of the theme of environmental protection;the humanism and technology theme uses more interrogative mood to reflect its critical and innovative thinking characteristics.(3)In terms of the proportion of imperative mood,the environmental protection theme is the largest,while the opportunity and challenge of globalization theme is the smallest.The latter attaches more importance to the consideration of the current situation,using less imperative mood.On Modality System,the following findings are found:(1)On the whole,the proportion of probability ranks the highest,with inclination ranking second and obligation ranking the lowest.The speakers value the subjective willingness of the audience more than imposing obligations on them.(2)In terms of the proportion of probability,the faith theme is the largest,while the opportunity and challenge of globalization theme is the smallest.The reason is that the former prefers narrative style while the latter prefers argumentative style.In terms of finite modal operator,could accounts for the largest proportion with the theme of faith,while will accounts for the largest proportion among other themes.(3)Usuality modality is mainly realized by modal adjuncts and finite modal operators are rarely used.(4)In terms of the proportion of obligation,the opportunity and challenge of globalization theme is the largest,while the faith theme is the smallest.The former emphasizes the obligations,while the latter emphasizes probability and inclination.In terms of finite modal operator,the proportion of should and need outnumbers must and have to.(5)In terms of the proportion of inclination,the environmental protection theme is the largest.In terms of finite modal operator,the proportion of can is much higher than that of would,because can indicates having the ability to launch the inclination rather than only having the willingness.On Person System,the following findings are found:(1)In terms of the proportion of the first person,the environmental protection theme is the largest,the humanism and technology theme is the smallest.(2)In terms of the proportion of the third person,the humanism and technology theme is the largest,while the environmental protection theme is the smallest.Environmental protection theme tends to use the first person to describe personal experiences and enhance the authenticity of speeches;while humanism and technology theme tends to use the third person to explore abstract concepts such as humanism and technology to enhance the objectivity of speeches.Research findings can be applied in classroom to guide college students to choose appropriate means of mood,modality and person according to different speech themes so as to improve the specific ability of college students’ English speeches and writing.