A Comparative Study Of Obama's Inaugural Address And Trump's Inaugural Address:A Perspective Of Transitivity

The head of the US government is the President of the United States,who has enormous power and influence,affecting not only the United States,but also the rest of the world.Learning about the governing style and governing philosophy of the US Presidents is very helpful to grasp the general trend of the relationship between China and the US,and the public's understanding of the new US President mainly starts from his inaugural address.Therefore,this thesis attempts to conduct a comparative and contrastive study of the inaugural address delivered by the 44^th American President Barack Hussein Obama II in 2009 and the inaugural address delivered by the 45^th American President Donald John Trump in 2017.Researchers at home and abroad have studied these two inaugural addresses from different perspectives,but few studies have made a comparative and contrastive analysis of them from the perspective of transitivity theory.This study will combine qualitative analysis with quantitative analysis to make a comparative and contrastive analysis of these two inaugural addresses.The purpose of the study is to find out the types and quantities of transitivity processes,summarize the similarities and differences of these transitivity processes in distribution,and discuss the reasons.The messages that these transitivity processes try to convey are also analyzed,from which we can also see the styles and political concepts of the two presidents.The study shows that in both Obama's inaugural address and Trump's inaugural address,all the six transitivity processes can be found.The top three transitivity processes in terms of quantity are material processes,relational processes and mental processes,while the number of existential processes,verbal processes and behavioral processes ranks the bottom three,which are also in line with Halliday's point of view:material processes,relational processes and mental processes are the three main types of processes in the English transitivity system.Although Trump's inaugural address is shorter than Obama's,he chooses more material processes,existential processes and behavioral processes,all of which emphasize objectivity,which account for a higher proportion than Obama's inaugural address.And Trump is inclined to use fewer mental processes,relational processes and verbal processes which are more subjective.President Obama and President Trump have specific functions in selecting each transitivity process.They choose the same processes to convey the same messages,but more often the same processes send completely different messages.From the choice of transitivity processes,we can see that compared with President Obama,President Trump puts more emphasis on“doing”rather than“saying”,and he does not like to care too much about the relevance of external things and the thoughts and feelings of others.This governing style,on the one hand,reflects that President Trump is an activist who is decisive and executive.On the other hand,it also easily leads to the polarized attitude of the American public towards him.However,President Obama is a more neutral president.He will balance the relationships and needs of all aspects to achieve a relatively balanced state of American society,and the American people will take a more moderate attitude towards him.The differences in their choices of processes are related to the historical environment at that time,the different purposes,the personal growth environment and personality traits.This study further proves the operability of transitivity theory as an analytical tool,and also provides a theoretical research method for later researchers.In addition,this study can enrich the research on the inaugural addresses of the two presidents.