Political Public Speeches By Chinese And U.S. Presidents: A Cross-cultural Genre Analysis

The thesis makes a comparison between Chinese and US presidents'political public speeches both from the macro structures and micro linguistic features under the framework of genre analysis.In the central part of the present paper, the moves and steps are identified at first. By analysis, the thesis identifies the differences in moves and steps in these speeches. It is found that there is subtle difference in the sequence of the moves and Chinese president's speeches consist of more moves and have a more complete structure than US president's speeches. Following that, it is to analyze the linguistic features of these speeches. Through comparison of the linguistic features, the thesis finds that Chinese and US presidents'political public speeches do share similarities, for example, similar sentence forms are selected by both of Chinese and U.S. political leaders to realize the same step in their speeches. However, differences also exist, including the use of personal pronouns, the utilization of nominalization, and the degree of formality. Finally, the thesis explores the possible reasons for the differences from the perspective of cultural and religious background.It is assumed that the research findings can promote the understanding of how country leaders select language strategies to achieve their communicative and political purposes. The present study is of certain value in instructing how to be a good public speaker and how to be an effective cross-cultural communicator. It is also of help for pedagogy, because it suggests that more attention should be paid to macro structures of English discourse.