Analysis Of Interpersonal Meaning In Obama's Political Speech

Interpersonal meaning of discourse refers to the function of negotiation or exchange between the addresser and the addressee, and the function of expressing the addresser's attitude, opinion, judgement, etc. so as to establish and maintain appropriate social relationships between the addresser and the addressee. In recent years, many researches on interpersonal meaning in discourse analysis have been made by linguistics; however, the application of interpersonal meaning to the study of political speech, especially of Obama's political speech, is far from being sufficient. Therefore, this thesis sheds the light on Obama's three famous political speeches from the perspective of interpersonal meaning so as to find out how interpersonal meaning is realized in Obama's political speeches and what the functions are.In this thesis, mood, modality and evaluation under the theoretical framework of systemic functional grammar are chosen to dig into the interpersonal meaning realized in Obama's political speeches. It is found that of the three mood structures, declarative mood is adopted by Obama most of the time, which is rather effective in transferring his political viewpoints to the audiences and at the same time making his words more acceptable; the imperative mood especially the"let's form"also appears many times which serves to arouse the hearers'emotion and therefore narrow the distance between them; the interrogative mood, although seldom used, may help the speaker to achieve some agreements with the listeners. As far as modality is concerned, the frequent use of positive medium and low value modal operators are preferred by the speaker so as to make his words less arguable and more acceptable; among the modal auxiliaries that are used, will is the most frequent word that appears in the speech, which can educe the commitment assumed by Obama and his government. The mood adjuncts and metaphors of modality can also contribute to expressing Obama's judgements and personal feelings to what he is talking about. When it comes to evaluation, we find that the evaluative lexical such as the adjectives, adverbs, verbs and nouns are effective to deliver Obama's attitudes, judgements, and values to the public and to make his words more concrete and acceptable, thus maintaining the social links with the hearers.Based on the above points, the thesis proves the workability and effectiveness of the systemic functional grammar in analyzing political speeches. It is hoped that this study may take a step forward in the discussion of the previous research on political speech, especially on the present American president Barack Obama's political speech, and meanwhile, it can provide some implications for the listeners to better understand the political speeches.