A Stylistic Analysis Of British Prime Minister Tony Blair's Speeches

The young generations today need good examples to follow. As the youngest Prime Minister in British history, Tony Blair took his third term successfully in 2005. Blair was an excellent student when he was at Cambridge. His political career was not smooth but he overcame all the barriers and gained the final success. Therefore, both his speech and his wisdom are good examples for the youth to study. Studying the speeches of the leaders of English-speaking countries will not only benefit our English study and teaching, but also make us attach to the wisdom of the leaders as well as the Western culture.This thesis deals with the linguistic features and discourse structures of the three speeches delivered by Tony Blair. As the genre of public speech, the selected speeches share similarities with both written language and spoken language. The language of public speech is more formal than daily conversation. Compared with written language, public speeches have to adapt to the audience's feedback and rely on skillful oral delivery. This thesis studies the sample speeches from the perspective of linguistics and discourse structure. The similarities are carried out in linguistic description and textual analysis in detail. Their differences are concerning the subject matter and degrees of formality.