Metafunctional Analysis Of Obama’ S Re-elected Inaugural Address

As a particular genre of political speech, American presidential inaugural addressrefers to such kind of speech which is delivered by the newly elected president to theAmerican people or the world on the inauguration day. Since George Washington madethe first inaugural address on the balcony of Federal Hall in New York on April30,1789, American presidential inaugural ceremony has become the paramount politicalscene every four years for all Americans. As the combination of language, culture,politics and history, presidential inaugural address has such profound significance that alarge number of experts and scholars study them form different perspectives. In the fieldof linguistics, the kind of address has been studied from genre, stylistics and rhetoric etc.On the basis of Halliday’s Functional Grammar and Discourse Analysis theories, thethesis analyzes American President Obama’s inaugural address in2013. In addition, thedetailed analysis will start from the perspective of three metafunctions in Halliday’sSystemic Functional Grammar.During the process of analysis from the perspective of ideational function, the mainfocus lies in the transitivity system, through which it is found that the application of anumber of material processes, mental processes and relational processes makes thewhole address more persuasive. Different participants, different kinds of personalpronouns can reflect the real intentions of the speaker. As for the interpersonal function,the thesis mainly studies the mood and modality system, of which one notablecharacteristic is the frequent use of the high value modal verbs aiming at calling for thepeople’s action to fight for the future of America. As for the textual function, focusing on the Theme-Rheme structure and the thematic progression pattern, the addresser tendsto apply the simple Theme and unmarked Theme. In terms of the thematic progressionpattern, Parallel Thematic Progression is dominant in that it makes the whole addresssound more powerful, persuasive and understandable.On the basis of functional discourse analysis, the thesis intends to reveal thecharacteristics of presidential inaugural addresses, to enhance the understanding of thekind of political address and grasp its real intentions. This may throw some inspirationson the study of English learning such as reading and writing.