A Study Of Rhetorical Functions Of Metadiscourse In President Obama’s Weekly Radio Addresses

The term “metadiscourse” was put forward by Harris in 1959,and metadiscourse has received increasingly attention recently as a relativ ely new concept in discou rse analysis. Reviewing the em pirical study of m etadiscourse, it, in ge neral, focuses on the study of written discourse, which is less discussed in public address.Twenty latest Obam a’s weekly rad io address are selected as a corpus in this thesis. And Hyland’s inte rpersonal model and classification of metadiscourse proposed by Ken Hyland(2008) is em ployed. Metediscourse is divided into interactive and interactional dimensions. This thesis aims to find out the distr ibution and features of m etadiscourse as well as how to real ize persuasion through ethos, pathos and logos. And in order to deal with the three questions, three ways are used, namely, semi-artificial and semi-automatic, quantitative and qualitative.Aristotle puts forward three m ethods of persuasion in his book Rhetoric, namely ethos, pathos and logos. Ethos refers to shap ing credibility; pathos refers to m oving people by emotion; logos refers to enhancing logical reasoning.What can be found by the analysis of this thesis is that interactive metadiscourse, like transitions, frame markers, endophoric markers, evidentials and code glosses can convince people by reasoning, thus to achieve the rhetorical function of logos. The interactional metadiscourse like engagem ent markers, hedges, attitude m arkers and self mentions can be emotionally m oving, thus to achieve the rh etorical function of pathos. Other m etadiscourse like he dges, boosters, attitude m arkers, engagementmarkers and evidentials can not only achieve the rhetorical function of ethos by presenting the facts and reasoning things out, but also by personal charisma.In thesis, it is hoped that through the study of rhetorical functions of metadiscourse, there will be a different pers pective, which can enrich the study of metadiscourse.