A Study On The Linguistic Features Of Obama’s Public Speeches Based On Foregrounding Theory

Foregrounding is a significant term in stylistics,which is proposed firstly by Mukarovsky from Russian Formalism.Through the inheritance and development of several generations of linguists from different schools such as Formalism and Prague School,foregrounding is ultimately integrated by British stylisticians Leech and Short,into a mature and systematic theoretical framework.Foregrounding theory’s powerful analytic function in illustrating literary texts has been widely approved and accepted at early development of stylistics.Its analytic functions in explaining non-literary texts have also been improved and strengthened.Until now the studies on non-literary style based on foregrounding theory usually focus on the linguistic features of news or advertisements,while relatively less on personal public speeches.As an outstanding orator,Obama uses excellent words to earn him respect and affection from Americans,which arouses worldwide attention.The majority of scholars mainly study his speeches from critical discourse analysis,rhetoric and stylistics.However,because of limitation of theory and methodology,previous studies cannot reveal Obama’s typical linguistic features in a systematic and overall way.On the basis of previous studies,this paper selects Obama’s ten speeches from authoritative organization and Website CNN.Then the thesis uses both quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze Obama’s public speeches systematically based on foregrounding theory and aims to clarify how Obama succeeds in using these unique linguistic features to express his effectively political views and vision,and to evaluate the artistic beauty and the appeal of his words,and finally to analyze how functions of these linguistic features are achieved in his speeches.The conclusion can be summarized as follows: Firstly,linguistic features used in high frequency are listed in the speeches.At lexical level,repetition is used more when Obama wishes to emphasize the meaning implied in repeated words;at phonological level,alliteration used with a high frequency can emphasize the hidden meaning and transmit rhythmical beauty;as for syntactic level,high-frequency uses of parallelism can enhance persuasion of language;at semantic level,metaphor used more can give a sense of novelty for people and its implied meaning can attract people’s attention.Then there are mainly eighteen important linguistic features used to achieve foregrounding in the speeches,and through the stylistic analysis it can be found that the uses of linguistic features are closely relevant to the theme of speeches and political views of Obama.Finally,linguistic features that are stylistically relevant achieve the expressive and persuasive functions,which can make the theme prominent.The significance of the study mainly lies in three aspects.Through analyzing typical linguistic features and two functions systematically,the study helps to improve readers’ aesthetic appreciation ability and to learn about Obama’s political vision.In addition,the study helps readers select proper words or devices to achieve communicative purposes.