A Diachronic Study Of Transitivity System In Chinese Presidents’ New Year Addresses

The New Year Address,as an essential ritual for the New Year,can transmit a lot of important information on the countries,such as the country’s latest policies,current difficulties,the achievements in the past year,new political goals,etc...As a special type of political discourse,the analysis of the presidents’ New Year Address has been associated with various theories.Among them,Halliday’s three metafucntions have been used frequently,especially for the theory of transitivity system.Reviewing the previous studies on the transitivity system in New Year Addresses,most of them were synchronic studies and focused on the discourse only in a certain year;diachronic studies were not sufficient.In this study,the author combined the Chinese presidents’ New Year Addresses with the transitivity system,making a diachronic analysis,attempting to answer following questions:(1)What are the types and distributions of transitivity system in Chinese Presidents’ New Year Addresses(2010-2020)?(2)What are diachronic variations in transitivity system in Chinese Presidents’ New Year Addresses(2010-2020)?(3)What are the changing tendencies of ideational meanings in the Chinese Presidents’ New Year Addresses(2010-2020)?The theory applied in this research is Halliday’s transitivity system,which includes two parts.One is the transitive model and the other is the ergative model.The transitive model focused on six ‘process types’ and their ‘participants’ while the ergative model focused on ‘agents’ and ‘mediums’.In this research,the ergative model was restricted to the analysis of the material process and served as a supplement to the transitive model.The New Year Addresses collected for this research spanned 10 years,which include two parts: one is delivered by the Chinese former President Hu Jintao from2010 to 2013 and the other is by the Chinese President Xi Jinping from 2014 to 2020.The research instruments applied in this research are the UAM Corpus Tool 3 and the Ant Conc 3.4.3.The author took advantage of software to establish index schemes of transitivity system,and to process the discourses.In this research,the author adopted both the quantitative analysis and the qualitative analysis.The first two research questions required quantitative analysis and needed a lot of data support;while the third question required qualitative analysis and needed to be associated with the cultural background and national conditions.According to three research questions,the findings of the research also include three aspects.The findings of the types and distributions of the transitivity system include two parts.(1)In six ‘process types’,the material process appeared most frequently,taking up 66.87%.The relational process was in second place,taking up12.87%.In the New Year Addresses,the material process played the role on presenting the achievements our country acquired and the focus of government’s work for next year.The relational process was used to highlight some new policies’ status and roles,the current state of the country and society and the tendency of the country’s development.(2)In terms of the ergative model,the percentage of mediums in the discourses was far beyond the percentage of agents.The frequency of agents used in the discourses was 36.00% while that of mediums was 88.41%.While discussing the country’s achievements,the presidents chose to present ‘mediums’ instead of ‘agents’.It proved that the presidents wanted to stress the achievements themselves and to weaken who made these achievements.Besides,the ‘agents’ belonging to ‘the collective’ category were most frequently used,taking up 79.4%.It means that the external force that made the country’s achievements was usually ‘the collective’,instead of the individual.The findings of the diachronic variations in the transitivity system include two aspects.(1)The categories of participants,agents and mediums used in the New Year Addresses have been increasing constantly.The ‘participants’ used in the New Year Address in 2010 only had 6 categories,but it has raised to 8 in 2020.From 2010 to2020,the categories of ‘agents’ have raised from 3 to 6 and the ‘mediums’,from 5 to9.Especially since 2014,several totally new categories have shown up for the first time,such as ‘Medical care’,‘Sport’,‘Law’,etc...Meanwhile,the frequency of some ‘old’ categories used in the addresses has also increased,such as ‘Livelihood’,the ‘mediums’ belonging to the category of ‘Livelihood’ used in the New Year Address in 2010 took up only 10%,but it has raised to 23.33% in 2020.(2)The language styles in the New Year Addresses have changed.Some ‘participants’ presented in the form of ‘clauses’ with rhetorical expressions have steep increased.The ‘participants’ presented in the form of ‘clauses’ with rhetorical expressions in the New Year Address in 2010 took up only 25%,but they have raised to 72.5% in 2020.The rhetorical expressions mentioned here include metaphor,personifications,antithesis and hyperbole.The changing tendencies of ideational meanings also include two aspects,one is the country’s development and the other is the presidents’ speaking styles.(1)For the country’s development,the fields the government needs to develop have been expanded since 2014 and the ‘new expanded’ fields were ‘technology’,‘medical’,‘environment and energy’,‘national defense’,‘education’,‘traffic’,‘law’ and ‘sport’;besides,our country has also made a lot of new progress in some important ‘old’fields,which have kept developing in the past,such as ‘policy and movement’ and‘livelihood’.(2)As for the presidents’ speaking styles,the languages the presidents used in the New Year Addresses have become more vivid and diversified,the elements involved in the addresses have increased and the language expressions have become more colorful.Besides,the contents involved in the New Year Addresses have become more specific and detailed.The addresses have changed from a general overview of the country’s situation to a detailed introduction to the country’s changes;and the combination with some concrete examples made the addresses more convincing.This paper has reflected different culture backgrounds,national conditions,and language styles embodied in Chinese presidents’ New Year addresses of different periods,as well as the changes our country made in various areas during these ten years.It is helpful to feel the progress of our country’s development and the features of two presidents’ personal speaking styles.In addition,it can also deepen our understandings of political speech and diachronic study.