An Realization Of Interpersonal Function In Obama’s 2015 State Of The Union From The Perspective Of The Appraisal

State of the Union not only belongs to the United States, Russia and other countries in the implementation of the presidential system, call the annual report presented to Congress by the President as State of the Union, which is mainly used by American presidents to clarify some situations from domestic and overseas faced by American government, as well as present the future policies. In general, the President will make an annual report to the Congress at the beginning of the year. Now, State of the Union has become a powerful way of playing a leading role in the country and a basic means of the President controlling the Congress. With the emergence of live television, State of the Union has gradually been a political speech that tries to influence the Congress and American people. Therefore, almost all the presidents of the United States attach great importance to the influence produced by State of the Union. In the speech, the President not only sums up the previous work, but also shows his views on the coming development of diplomacy, economy, employment, education, health care and other fields and policies that will be taken. The release of American State of the Union has abstracted attentions from the United States and even around the world all the time.This thesis analyzes Obama’s 2015 State of the Union Address from the Appraisal, its aim is to further interpret how President Obama to achieve the success of this speech through the realization of interpersonal function under the Appraisal. Besides, through the analysis of this speech, this thesis reveals how to use all kinds of evaluation resources to align the audience and create a good atmosphere between Obama and his audience. And it also provides a good presentation skills for people who is interested in public speaking. The Appraisal is developed by James R.Martin and other scholars under the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics in 1990s, which is mainly aimed at Interpersonal Function. It is one of the three metafunctions of Systemic Functional Linguistics. In Halliday’s An Induction to Functional Grammar, his study of Interpersonal Function is mainly on mood and modality, but Martin, a student of Hallidy found some deficiencies about this research, and put forward the Appraisal with White. The Appraisal is about how to use language to evaluate, take a stand and adjust the interpersonal relationship, which consists of attitude, engagement and graduation.This thesis adopts quantitative and qualitative methods to study the distribution and function of evaluation resources in this speech. By analyzing, we can find that attitude resources are widely used in this speech, affect resources are in the first place, judgment resources are in the second and appreciation resources are relatively less. And positive attitude resources are more than negative ones. The analysis of engagement resources indicates the speech is contractive rather than expansive. The analysis of graduation resources can show force resources outnumber focus resources in this speech.This thesis consists of three parts:introduction, body and conclusion.The first part is the introduction to the thesis. It introduces the study of the Appraisal. In addition, it also proposes the research meaning of the thesis.The second part is the main part of the whole thesis, including four chapters.In Chapter One, there are three parts. In first part, there is a brief introduction to some related theories including the Appraisal, Interpersonal Function and the relation between them. The second part gives an overview of the research views of the Appraisal at home and abroad. The third part gives an overview of the studies of State of the Union.In Chapter Two, it gives a detailed analysis of the realization of Interpersonal Function in Obama’s 2015 State of the Union Address from the way of Attitude. There are three parts in this Chapter. In the first part, it analyses the distribution of affect resources in the selected speech in detail. Through the analysis of the distribution of affect resources in this speech, we can see how Obama to use the affect resources. The second part studies the distribution of judgment resources in the selected speech in detail. Through the analysis of the distribution of judgment resources in this speech, we can see how Obama to use the judgment resources. The third part studies the distribution of appreciation resources in the selected speech in detail. Through the analysis of the distribution of appreciation resources in this speech, we can see how Obama to use the appreciation resources.In Chapter Three, it gives a detailed analysis of the realization of Interpersonal Function in Obama’s 2015 State of the Union Address from engagement. There are two parts in this Chapter. The first part discusses the distribution of dialogic contract in the selected speech in detail. And dialogic contract is also divided into disclaim and proclaim. The second analyses the distribution of dialogic expand in the selected speech in detail. And dialogic expand is also classified into entertain and attribute.In Chapter Four, it analyzes the realization of Interpersonal Function in Obama’s 2015 State of the Union Address from the way of graduation. There are two parts in this Chapter. The first part studies the distribution of force in the selected speech in detail and discusses how Obama realize Interpersonal Function by the use of force resources. The second analyses the distribution of focus in the selected speech in detail and discusses how Obama realizes Interpersonal Function by the use of focus resources.The third part is the conclusion of the whole thesis. Through the analysis of how all kinds of evaluation resources are distributed in Obama’s speech, it elaborates some major findings about this paper and summarizes the restrictions of this study. And it also offers some proposals for the future study, so as to more systematically and comprehensively use the Appraisal to the research of political speeches. Besides, there is still some weakness of the Appraisal in this thesis, which needs to be further discussed in the afterwards study.