A Comparative Study Between Chinese And Thai Leaders' New Year Speeches

Throughout history, “speech” is one of the most important to show thoughts, and mostly has been used in ceremonies and important occasions. It is also profound to people until now. “Ceremonial Speech” is a particular kind of speech of its own. On every important national holiday and activity, national leaders are at the public place to make a speech to explain the content of activity to the audiences. Speech is one unit of discourse. At the same time, ceremonial speech can show social background, cultural ideas, ways of thinking, and behaviors of each of represented community. A comparative study between Chinese and Thai can more deeply create an understanding of these two countries' cultures and traditions as shown in the speeches.Although there are many studies related to speeches, there are a few scholars focusing on Chinese and Thai leaders' speeches. Most studies focus on the United States leaders' speeches and emphasise on political speeches or inspirational speeches, while studies on ceremonial speeches are usually left out. Furthermore, there have not been many studies on addressing terms and greetings that appeared on the speeches, and there has been no one using discourse analysis and comparative linguistics theory to analyze Chinese and Thai leaders' speeches. The findings of this comparative research will be useful for Chinese and Thai linguistics study.The research has used Michael Halliday and Hasan's Cohesion theory as its theoretical basis. However, this theory is based on English language and it is unknown to many Thai and Chinese researchers. Chinese and Thai researchers, among others have also studied the theory and made it deeper, therefore this theory can also adapt to Chinese and Thai cohesion.The research objective is to study Chinese and Thai leaders' speeches of 2007 to 2016 of New Year's speeches and traditional New Year's speeches(Spring Festival and Songkran festival). Although, these speeches were in oral language, they also were formal language. The research studies and analyzes addressing terms, greetings and cohesion shifts between Chinese and Thai Leader's speeches and these two countries' society, culture, and ways of thinking.The results of the study revealed that Chinese and Thai New Year's speeches have several differences. First, the choosing of addressing terms in the speeches were different. In Chinese speeches, the leaders used Chinese special or unique addressing terms that bring out global outlook which would be used internationally. However, in Thai speeches, Thai leaders used royal appellation to show their respect to the royal family and have used kinship terms to call Thai people because those leaders want the peoples' support. Therefore, there were four reasons that made the leaders of the two countries use different appellation: politics, society, historical culture and religions.Next, the greetings in the speeches were also different. In the New Year's speeches, while the Chinese leaders rather gave blessing to the masses, Thai leaders gave more blessings to the royal family, government employees and high-rank officers. Most of Chinese greetings are with four characters structure. For instance, in the spring festivals, Chinese speeches had culture and zodiac greetings, but Thai New Year's speeches were in the sentences structure. Thai leaders may also ask Lord Buddha to bless the royal family and wish royal family's virtues to bless the Thai people. Thus, there were four distinct reasons for the difference in the speeches: national politics, thought, culture and religions.Chinese and Thai New Year's speeches' modes of cohesion were also different. According to Michael Halliday and Hasan's cohesion theory, this research has applied six classifications of cohesion which are reference, ellipsis, substitution, repetition, conjunction and lexical cohesion. Comparatively, Chinese and Thai New Year's speeches had some of the same cohesive methods while others different. Pronoun reference and repetition of structure appear mostly in Chinese speeches, but substitution does not. However, nominal reference, ellipsis and repetition appear mostly in Thai speeches. From all the speeches in both languages, the frequency of cohesive devices used was different. This shows that Chinese and Thai people had a difference of values and ways of thinking.Language is the carrier of culture, reflecting society and people's thought. In different societies and cultures, peoples' thoughts are also different. Accordingly, Chinese and Thai languages are also different.In summary, the research study finds that Chinese and Thai's New Year and traditional New Year's speeches are different and the using of addressing terms, greetings and cohesion between these languages have its differences and similarities.The comparative study of ceremonial speeches also has other ways to study such as rhetorical discourse or language style. At the same time, the research could possibly be applied and useful to Chinese and Thai language comparison study.