A Study On Ma Yun’s English Speeches From The Perspective Of Burke’s Identification Theory

According to the updated Bloomberg Billionaires Index(BBI) on August 28th,2014, the founder and executive chairman of Alibaba group, Ma Yun (Jack Ma, the former CEO) topped the newly list of the richest Chinese. On December 11th, Ma Yun overtook Li Ka-Shing and became the richest man in Asia according to the BBI. The Alibaba group landed the New York Stock Exchange on September 20th,2014, ranking the largest IPO (Initial Public Offerings) in American history. Due to Ma Yun’s success, the Forbes named him the "Chinese Napoleon". With his success, Ma Yun was invited frequently abroad to spread his secrets and philosophies in business. Undoubtedly, he won great applause from the audience at home and abroad.Based on Burke’s identification theory, this thesis tries to analyze how Ma Yun adopts the rhetorical strategies to realize his purpose in his speeches. Previous studies are mainly analyzed from merely figurative strategies of Aristotle’s rhetorical theory (ethos, pathos and logos), which is rather difficult to gain new instructions. This thesis, however, employs Burke’s identification theory to analyze Ma Yun’s speeches, which offers a new angle in rhetorical study.This thesis adopts both qualitative and quantitative methods, analyzing eight speeches delivered by Ma Yun from 2008 to 2015, serving as the source of samples and object of analysis based on Kenneth Burke’s Identification. The study firstly analyzes the rhetorical situation in Ma Yun’s speeches, then further explores how Ma Yun realizes identification with the audience by adopting two major rhetorical strategies:identification by rhetorical content and identification via rhetorical forms. This thesis conducts a statistical study on the frequency of different identification strategies appearing in Ma Yun’s eight speeches from rhetorical content and rhetorical forms respectively, aiming to find out Ma Yun’s preference in each strategy. Therefore, this thesis tries to answer the following questions:(1) What is the rhetorical situation in Ma Yun’s English speeches? (2) What identification strategies are employed in order to achieve identification between the addresser and the addressees in Ma Yun’s English speeches? (3) How identification strategies are adopted to realize identification between the addresser and the addressees in Ma Yun’s English speeches?The analysis of the rhetorical situation in Ma Yun’s speeches starts from three aspects:the exigencies of the speech; the divisions between the speaker and the audience; the motivations of the speaker. The analysis of the rhetorical situation makes it necessary and important for the speaker to adopt the rhetorical strategies to gain identification with the audience. To reach rhetorical effects, the speaker mainly adopts the strategies of rhetorical content and rhetorical forms, including:identification by sympathy, identification by antithesis, identification by inaccuracy, identification via conventional form, identification via repetitive form, identification via progressive form and identification via figurative form. The speaker achieves identification by sympathy from three aspects:identification in common values, identification in ethics, identification in emotional states. Ma Yun employs the strategy of antithesis to call on people to work together against economic difficulties and strengthen cooperation. In inaccuracy, he adopts frequently first-person plural pronouns and ambiguous words to reach rhetorical effects. Almost eight speeches comply with the conventional form. Repetitive form is used to emphasize something important or urgent. Major figurative forms adopted by Ma Yun include metaphor, parallelism, contrast and parody. Finally, the statistic analysis on the distributive frequency of different strategies shows that the speaker prefers to gain identification by adopting two strategies more frequently:identification by sympathy and identification via figurative form, accounting for 76% and 55% respectively.Through this study, it can help understand Ma Yun’s English speeches better and broaden the scope of Burke’s identification theory in application. What’s more, this study offers an evidence for the application of identification theory, which can, to some extent, strengthen the explanatory of it. Finally, this study will also be meaningful in writing, speech teaching and language learning.