Attitude Analysis Of President Obama's Weekly Radio Addresses Under The Appraisal Theory

As a new approach of linguistics, Appraisal Theory develops out of the interpersonal function within Systemic Functional Linguistics. Appraisal Theory is concerned with the linguistic resources by which the writer or speaker can express their attitudes, get involved in propositions, and grade the assessments of meanings. It is divided into three sub-systems: attitude, engagement, and graduation. And under each system, several branches or subsystems are defined. Specifically, this theory is concerned about how to use the language to express emotions, judgments of events and appreciation of stuffs, as well as how to carry out potential interaction with listeners or readers and to move their feelings, thus influence the attitude of listeners or readers towards things.This thesis applies Appraisal Theory to the analysis of twelve pieces of Obama's weekly Radio Addresses from attitudinal perspective. By the application of the UAM Corpus Tool developed by the linguist Mick O'Donnell, it aims at analyzing the distribution of the attitudinal resource in Obama's weekly Radio Address. Quantitative analysis will be done to uncover the distribution of different attitudinal resources, and qualitative analysis will also be done to give explanation for the deeper understanding of the theory.It is of great importance to attempt to make a tentative research of the analysis of Obama's weekly radio addresses from the perspective of Appraisal Theory. Studying attitudinal resources in Obama's weekly radio addresses plays an important role in further understanding of the Appraisal framework and political radio address.