A Contrastive Study On The Generic Structure Potentials Of Chinese And American Presidents’ New Year’s Messages

It has become a custom that the political leader of a country should deliver a New Year’s message to the fellow citizens. New Year’s messages convey information about the current situation of the country, express attitudes and opinions of the government and the leader, and help to strengthen the relationship between government and common people. Therefore, more and more importance is attached to New Year’s messages with the growing attention paid by the public.Therefore, this thesis will adopt Hasan’s Generic Structure Potential theory to make a contrastive analysis of Chinese and American Presidents’ New Year’s messages delivered from 2002 to 2011. After examining thoroughly the 20 messages, the researcher finds that Chinese Presidents’ New Year’s messages include 17 structure elements. Among the 17 elements, 14 are obligatory and the rest 3 are optional ones. Based on this, the researcher formulates the Generic Structure of Chinese President’s New Year’s messages. American Presidents’ New Year’s messages include 14 structure elements, 5 of which is obligatory and the rest 9 are optional. Based on this, the researcher formulates the Generic Structure of American President’s New Year’s messages.Then the researcher makes a comparison of the two kinds of Generic Structure Potentials, attempting to summarize their similarities and differences. Similarities are mainly reflected in the common communicative purposes and Contextual Configurations, as well as seven common structure elements. Differences are:(1) Generally speaking, Chinese Presidents’ New Year’s messages are more formal and follow a fixed model;(2) in the tenor of Contextual Configurations, Chinese Presidents’ New Year’s messages are directed at a large population and are more internationally-oriented while American Presidents’ New Year’s messages are more nationally-oriented;(3) except for the seven common structure elements, greater differences exist in the other elements. Chinese Presidents’ New Year’s messages have more obligatory elements and American Presidents’ New Year’s messages have more optional elements, which lead to(4) the more fixed sequencing of elements of Chinese Presidents’ New Year’s messages compared with that of American Presidents’ New Year’s messages.At last, the researcher attempts to explain the reasons for the above differences from the perspectives of traditional culture and social background, finding that the difference between individualism and collectivism, and that between large power distance culture and small power distance culture could be important reasons.As genre studies on political leaders’ New Year’s messages are relatively rare, this research may help to make some tentative contributions in this field and offer certain guidelines to the writing and teaching of political speeches.