A Study On Interpersonal Function In State Of The Union Address

Language is not only a way to communicate but also a resource for making social meaning.Different social environment,communication objects need people to use different styles of language.Political speech is a language communication activity.As a genre of speech,it embodies political and class characters.Speakers achieve their desired political purposes by taking form of debates and speeches.State of the Union Address is an important political speech annually delivered by the US President before a joint of Congress in which the President mainly expounds the domestic and foreign situations and the measures to be taken by the government.Through this speech,the President needs to propose a legislative agenda and win the approval of the Congress and the public,which is the process of realization of interpersonal function of language.Halliday proposes that language has three meta-functions,namely ideational function,interpersonal function and textual function.The interpersonal function refers to the way how the speakers establish and maintain interpersonal relationships with the hearers in verbal interaction.Halliday mainly studies the realization of interpersonal function from three aspects: mood,modality and key.However,evaluation is widely used in discourse,so it should be considered as a major element of interpersonal meaning.Martin's Appraisal Theory plays a supplementary role in the analysis of interpersonal function by dividing evaluation into attitude,engagement and graduation.Based on Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar and Martin's Appraisal Theory,this paper will analyze how the interpersonal function is realized in State of the Union Address,taking five speeches from 2014 to 2019 as the data,by means of the research on mood,modality,personal pronoun,attitude and engagement.In the analysis of mood,this paper summarizes several types of mood in State of the Union Address,that is,declarative mood,imperative mood and interrogative mood.It turns out that the Presidents use a lot of declarative mood in their speeches,with the highest proportion.As for modality analysis,this study analyzes interpersonal function from three dimensions: modality types,orientation and value.The results show that the use of modulation is more than that of modalization.The median value of modality occupies the highest percentage in these addresses.Furthermore,the first personal pronouns are used frequently in State of the Union Address,in which plural form “we” has large proportion in first personal pronoun.In terms of attitude resources,affect,judgment and appreciation are all reflected in these addresses,among which appreciation resources are the most used,and these attitude resources are mainly positive.As for engagement resources analysis,both contract and expand are reflected in discourses.Contract is mainly realized through denial,which is used to express determination and position of addressers,while expand is used to enhance the persuasive power of their viewpoints.This study effectively applies the framework of systemic functional linguistics to the analysis of political discourse,contributing to expand the research field of interpersonal function.Moreover,this paper can deepen the understanding of State of the Union Address,and can play a guiding role for language learners in using language resources to achieve their desired communicative purposes,in order to obtain a better performance of speech.