A Comparative Analysis Of Attitude Resources In American Presidents’ Weekly Radio Addresses

As a new linguistic theory,Appraisal Theory is developed on the basis of systemic functional grammar.Appraisal System involves how language expresses individual emotions,attitudes towards events and evaluations of objects.Appraisal theory consists of three subsystems,including attitude,engagement and graduation.Attitude subsystem is the core of Appraisal Theory,which is divided into affect,judgment and appreciation.As a special political discourse,American presidents’ weekly radio addresses contain abundant attitude resources.Through the collection of corpus,the author finds that most of the two presidents’ radio addresses focus on three aspects: national security,immigration policy and medical insurance.Therefore,the author selects 30 speeches about these three topics on the official website.Based on the attitude subsystem of Appraisal Theory,the author aims to make a systematic comparative analysis of the weekly radio addresses of Obama and Trump and explore the reasons for the similarities and differences.The author finds that firstly,in terms of affect analysis,on national security,Democrat Obama uses inclination resources to express the government’s prospects and expectations for the future.While Trump employs plenty of security resources,hoping that the American people will unite together to safeguard national security under his leadership.On immigration policy,Obama focuses on the use of security resources and inclination resources to emphasize that the government will further reform and improve immigration policies.Republican Trump uses lots of inclination resources and happiness resources to show that he will strengthen legal construction constantly so that immigrants can enjoy a better life.On medical insurance,both presidents promise to the American people from different perspectives with a large number of security resources,thus gaining public recognition and support.Secondly,in terms of judgment analysis,as far as national security and medical insurance are concerned,Obama tends to use social esteem resources to demonstrate his ability to lead the American government to create a more powerful country and a more stable society.On national security,Republican Trump lays emphasis on the importance of national defense by using social sanction resources and points out the problems and solutions.On medical insurance,Trump makes full use of social esteem resources to expose the loopholes in Obamacare and convince people that he will propose more reasonable policies.As far as immigration policy is concerned,Democrat Obama prefers to reform immigration system in a moderate way,while Republican Trump takes a tough attitude to intensify law enforcement.Finally,in terms of appreciation analysis,reaction resources and valuation resources outnumber composition ones.With regard to national security and immigration policy,Obama uses more appreciation words to express his evaluations of things and phenomena.He hopes that the American government will convey confidence and strength to people,pledging to strive to achieve universal healthcare.Trump applies a lot of appreciation resources to tell people that he will come up with better medical insurance policies to meet the fundamental interests of the American people on medical insurance.This research makes a comparative analysis of weekly radio addresses within the framework of Appraisal Theory.It is the author’s hope that it will help audiences or readers to have a better understanding of the evaluative meanings of political speeches.