A Comparative Study Of The Speeches Delivered By Chinese And American Top Leaders From The Perspective Of Discourse Analysis

This thesis presents a study of four public speeches, two delivered by Chinese President Xi Jinping and the other two by American President Obama. Two of the four speeches are inaugural addresses while the other two were delivered on their visit to foreign countries. The theoretical principles guiding the analyses are those of contrastive discourse analysis, and the research is mainly a linguistic study. The purpose of this research is to find out the contrastive as well as shared linguistic and rhetorical features in their respective speeches, to pin down the strategies they use in their respective public speeches, and to reveal the socio-cultural sources of those characteristics and strategies.After Chapter 1, which is a brief introduction, the thesis begins to explicate the theoretical framework of the research and some relevant technical terms in Chapter 2. Then it gives a concise survey of literature at home and abroad concerning the topic of this research in Chapter 3, and lists five research questions in Chapter 4. Chapter 5, Methodology and Data, discusses the methods employed in the research, proves the authenticity of data collected and explains classification of samples. The body part of the thesis is Chapter 6, which focuses on comparison of the two sets of speeches from three perspectives, namely the lexical, syntactic and pragmatic features of language use. The study also tries to show how speakers gear their speeches to different audiences, that is, they are conscious of the differences between domestic and foreign audiences. In Chapter 7, Conclusion, the major findings of the research is summarized, their implications for political leadership and foreign diplomacy are pointed out, and suggestions are made regarding topics for futures research work.