Transitivity Analysis Of Obama's Weekly Address From The Perspective Of Systemic-Functional Grammar

Ever since Halliday(1967)has broken the traditional concept of transitivity and explained the transitivity on the semantic level,the transitivity theory and its application have attracted the attention of more and more linguistic scholars both abroad and in China.The study is set to analyze how the 44th United States president Barrack H.Obama manipulates language in his Weekly Radio Addresses to enhance his political ideologies by using Halliday's transitivity system.Through the analysis of the distributions of the different processes and main participants,this thesis tries to find the political motivation hidden by the use of language.In the meanwhile,the author attempts to explore the deep social significance via transitivity analysis of the ideational function.Specifically,four questions are designed to achieve this goal:First,what are the distributions of the six transitivity process types in the selected Obama's Weekly Addresses and why?Second,what are the functions of the six transitivity processes in the selected Obama's Weekly Addresses?Third,what are the distributions of six transitivity process types in different themes of the selected Obama's Weekly Addresses and why?Fourth,what are the distributions of participants and why?Based on the previous studies,twenty-four speech discourses have been selected randomly from the Weekly Addresses delivered between the year 2014 and 2016 of different themes to reveal the realization of ideational function in Obama's speeches.The topics cover six fields,namely education,economy,military,environment,welfare and festival greetings respectively.Both quantitative and qualitative analysis are conducted to ensure validity and reliability of the research result.The author adopts quantitative method to collect related data of the distributions of six transitivity process types and main participants,and then employs qualitative method to do case study and contrastive study to explore the functions of transitivity processes and the explanation of the distributions.Throughout the course of the study,excel and Word Smith are acquired to support the statistical analysis.Among the six processes outlined in the framework,the study discovers that material processes mostly dominates the speech,followed by relational processes,while mental processes come third.Material clauses suggest that Obama arranges his word for action.He does it to win the people's trust and confidence.His choice of actors shows that Obama attributes people in the same level with him in the government body.It is a characteristic of democratic leadership style.He also uses mental verbs to give psychological touch in his addresses and expresses his different attitudes towards different issues.Relational process has been widely used to introduce policies.As for the main participants,we/our/us top the list in counting the main participants of the six processes of President Obama's Addresses.These applications of the we/our/us and even "ourselves" shortened the distance between President Obama and his audience,and could achieve an identification with the American audience.They/them/their are used to represent enemies to show an opposite stand.Most of you/your in the Address are used to express blessings at the end of an address.In the meanwhile,Obama seldom used 1/my/me,which not only manifests his modest and cooperative characteristics but also ensures the political speech being more objective,persuasive and impartial.On completing the thesis,there are still many limitations in the study.Firstly,the circumstantial element has not been studied in this transitivity analysis.Secondly,synchronic and diachronic comparison has not been taken into consideration.This may also serve as reference for future study.