论文总字数：39449字

摘 要

1. Introduction 1

1.1 Introduction of Trump’s inaugural address 1

1.2 Need for the study 2

1.3 Research purpose 3

1.4 The structure of this thesis…………………………………………………….3

2. Literature Review 4

2.1 Introduction of interpersonal metafunction 4

2.2 Relevant Researches 6

3. Methodology.……………………………………………………………………….7

3.1 Research questions…………………………………………………………….7

3.2 Research subjects……………………………………………………...………7

3.3 Research procedures………………………………………………………...…7

4. Results and Analysis 8

4.1 Mode system 8

4.2Modality system 9

4.3 Personal pronoun system 11

5. Conclusion 13

5.1 Major findings and implications ..13

5.2 Limitation and advice 14

References...................................................................................................................15

Appendix Ⅰ: Trump's inaugural speech……………………………………………16

List of tables

Table 3.1 Frequency of different types of mode.......................................................8

Table 3.2 Frequency of different modality................................................................9

Table 3.3 Frequency of different types of personal pronouns................................11

Acknowledgment

I really want to show my great gratitude to everyone who helped and supported me when I was doing my thesis.

First, I want to thank my supervisor, Prof. Liu Nonghong for offering me constant guidance at the very beginning. Her professional knowledge, rigorous academic attitude, excelsior work style, strict self-discipline, and easy-going personality charm has far-reaching impact on me.

Next, I want to give my appreciation to my friends who encouraged me when I was facing barriers in both thesis and life. Their comfort made me brave enough to solve these barriers.

Then, I want to express my profound love to my family. With their care and support, I was inspired to complete the paper.

Abstract

After Donald Trump was elected as the present American president, it is important to deeply understand the purpose and real intention of Trump’s inaugural speech. Based on the interpersonal metafunction perspective of Systematic Functional Linguistics which is put forward by Halliday, this paper focuses on the reflection of interpersonal meaning in the light of mood, modality and personal pronouns of Trump’s inaugural speech.

The study shows that Trump uses declarative clauses frequently, makes use of “can”, “will” and “must” probably, chooses personal pronouns—“I” and “we”. On the one hand, Trump tries to make himself better understood by the public. On the other hand, he tries to earn the faith and support of the public. He makes the communication between him and the public fluently and successfully.

Keywords: inaugural speech; interpersonal metafunction

摘要

在特朗普成为当今美国总统之后，深入理解他就职演讲的目的与真实意图很重要。通过韩礼德提出的系统功能语言学中的人际功能视角，本文从特朗普就职演说的语气、情态和人称代词三个方面来探讨人际意义的体现。

研究表明，特朗普经常使用陈述句，适当地使用“能”、“会”和“必须”，灵活地选择人称代词——“我”和“我们”。一方面，特朗普试图让公民更好地理解他，另一方面，他试图赢得公民的信任和支持。他和公民之间的交流顺畅而成功。

关键词：就职演讲；人际功能

1. Introduction
   1. Introduction of Trump’s inaugural address

On January 20, 2017, Donald Trump as a Republican candidate was officially elected as president of the United States. Meanwhile, he delivered his inaugural speech. Donald Trump has multiple identities. He's a billionaire with billions of dollars in assets; he's a writer with a lot of successful works; he's a celebrity with a lot of headlines; he's a golfer with a grand slam. All these identities cultivate his various and complex characteristics which lead him to do many disputed things.

In Trump’s inaugural speech, 5 points were especially important. Firstly, Trump lashed out at Washington's establishment for pocketing money, and the fruits of US interests should be shared by all. He claimed that some people in Washington took away the fruits of American development and let the people bear the corresponding costs. The self-protection of the establishment faction is the reason for seizing these benefits, but the United States is not the country of this small group of people. The previously neglected people will not be neglected in the future. The American people are the real masters of the United States. Secondly, serving people is the significance of the country's existence and actively promotes the implementation of education, life, and employment. Trump said that the meaning of government was to serve the people. Thirdly, paying attention to the development of the United States, protecting the rights and interests of the people, and making the United States truly rich and strong is the next step. In the future, every decision made by the United States will be based on the interests of the American people and American families and will protect the rights and interests of the American people themselves. Two principles must be adhered to: buy American goods and hire Americans. Fourthly, American will deepen the relationship with old allies, establish a new alliance system and safeguard world peace. The power of example is irreplaceable. The United States hopes to become the object of imitation for all nations all around the world. While consolidating the old alliance, American should also open up new ones. Countries around the world should unite to wipe out the radical Islamic State and terrorist organizations. Trump called on the American people to unite. When the American people unite, the country will be unstoppable. Finally, Trump called on people of all races to dare to think and act, to keep forging ahead and to realize the American dream. He believes that every country can survive only if it keeps forging ahead and creating. This is true of the country, the government and the people.

Political speech refers to a kind of speech in which people express their stand, clarify their views and publicize their opinions on domestic political affairs and foreign relations, including: the election speech of the head of government, the speech of administration, the inaugural speech, the speeches of leaders at all levels to publicize the major policies and implementation plans, etc. (Li, amp; Zou, 2003). The purpose of a political speech is to persuade the audience to take some action to strengthen or weaken or change their attitude or belief towards something. In order to achieve these goals, speeches need to be attractive, persuasive and inspiring (Huang, amp;Yang, 2008).Inaugural speakers need to establish a good interpersonal relationship with the audience in order to win wide support from the audience. Trump’s inaugural speech successfully serves as an effective political address because he not only conveys his political ideas but also earns the support and trust of the people.

• 1. Need for the study

The victory speech of presidential election was delivered by the new President after a long and difficult campaigning the United State. It will not only reveal the identity of the new president but also conclude the summary of the election, the joy of the result and new political views. As a president with unique individual characteristics and lots of controversies, the victory speech of president Trump should be focused (Liu, amp; Zhang, 2018).

When Trump has become the present American president, his attitude and intention expressed in his speech will probably become the country’s attitude and intention. As tensions rise between China and the United States, we should pay more attention to the political views and real intentions of president.

1.3 Research purpose

In inaugural speech, Trump explains his political ideas to the American people. I want to resort on interpersonal metafunction to analyze how Trump gained the support and trust of the people and made the people feel that he was closely connected with the speech in order to ensure the smooth communication between the hearer and the speaker in his speech. What is more, the analysis of interpersonal function will help us to cultivate critical thinking, understand the purpose of speech as well as the speaker's real intention, and learn conversational skills.

1.4 The structure of this thesis

Firstly, this thesis gives a brief introduction about the target text, its purposes and significance. Secondly, relevant literature review will be discussed, including the introduction of interpersonal metafunction and relevant researches. In the third chapter, this paper mainly presents its research methodology, including research questions, research subject and procedures. The fourth chapter mainly discusses the research results, showing what kinds of interpersonal means of expression Trump adopted and explaining the reason why Trump chose these means. Finally, conclusions are made about how to select the conversational strategies.

1. Literature Review

In this chapter, the interpersonal metafunction will be discussed and I will explain why I choose this topic.

2.1 Introduction of interpersonal metafunction

Functional issues are important in language research. The first two people that gave a clear definition of language function are British anthropologist Malinowski and German psychologist Buller. After investigating and observing the languages of the indigenous peoples, Malinowski classified the languages into three functions: practical function, witchcraft function and greeting function. Buller distinguishes three language functions: descriptive function, expressive function and appealing function. The theory of Halliday was influenced by Firth and other linguists of London School, who all emphasized the importance of language situation and language system and were famous for systematic functional linguistics. Halliday has formed his own view of language and established his own theory of language while drawing on the strengths of many scholars. The publication of Introduction to Functional Grammar (1985) indicated that the integrity of the systemic functional linguistics theory had basically formed and became increasingly mature.

In the process of children and adults learning language, Halliday distinguished the function of language. There are seven functions in children's language model: instrumental function, controlling function, interactive function, self-referential function, heuristic function, imaginative function, and descriptive function. As adult language becomes more complex, the function of children's language gradually becomes more abstract, that is, meta-function. Halliday first proposed the four functional parts of systemic functional grammar in 1968, namely experiential function, logical function, discourse function and interpersonal function. In 1970, some adjustments or changes were made to these four functions: experiential function and logical function were regarded as two components of conceptual function, and discourse function was renamed textual function.

As a famous linguist of London school, he inherited and developed Firth's academic thought and challenged Chomsky's formal theory. His theories and thoughts have been spread and recognized in the world universally and unprecedentedly. Halliday's theory of systemic functional grammar focuses on the pragmatic study of language. From the research process of language learning, the process from instrumental function, regulatory function, interactive function had been completed, expressive function, personal function, heuristic function, imaginative function to conceptual function, which means language has the process of reflecting the occurrence of things in the objective world, as well as the function of people's inner world. Interpersonal function means that language has the function of establishing, maintaining and reflecting interpersonal relationships. Textual function means that language has the function of organizing sentences into texts and organizing and transmitting information according to the context of communication. The conceptual function is to organize the speaker or writer’s experience of the imaginary world of reality. It corresponds closely to the descriptive function, but it is broader because it also includes the expression of the speaker’s attitude, evaluation, his feelings and emotions. The textual function is to organize written or spoken texts in such a manner that are coherent within themselves and fit the particular situation in which they are used.

By far the most important sociological use of language is the interpersonal function, by which people establish and maintain their status in a society. In the framework of functional grammar, this function refers to the interaction between the speaker and the spoken person in the context of discourse, as well as the speaker's attitude towards what he says or writes. The interpersonal function of language is to express the identity, status, attitude, motivation and inference of the speaker. Due to the interpersonal function of language, the speaker expresses his attitude with language, and judges or tries to influence others' attitude, degree and behavior accordingly. The mood system and modality system, as well as personal pronoun system were used to realize the function of language.

2.2 Relevant researches

Researches on the Trump’s inaugural address are mainly about the critical discourse analysis, the stylistic analysis and the contextual behavioral speech analysis. People seldom do the interpersonal metafiction analysis on Trump’s inaugural speech. Even though they did, I think their research is not particular and comprehensive. For example, research done by Deng Huiying she barely elaborates the mode part and modality part. What’s more, the lack of the examples undermines her credibility. So this study tries to improve it. Furthermore, seldom researchers explain how they do these researches. For example, they never mention how they calculate the numbers of different mode and what kinds of cases are included in their calculation of personal pronouns.

When I collect the researches from the interpersonal metafunction perspective, I found almost no one pays attention to it. I chose this topic for two reasons. On the one hand, I am interested in the theory of interpersonal metafunction. On the other hand, I want to make more people learn about this theory. In this paper, more details are displayed. However, I know that my research is not perfect. I am willing to accept corrections and suggestions.

1. Methodology

3.1 Research questions

This thesis aims to answer the following two questions: 1) What kinds of interpersonal means of expression did Trump adopt. 2) What kinds of Trump’s real intentions are revealed by these interpersonal means of expression used.

3.2 Research subjects

Based on the interpersonal metafunction of systemic functional linguistics, this paper analyzes Trump's inaugural address from the perspectives of mood, modality and personal pronoun. The theoretical basis of this study is interpersonal function, one of the three meta-language functions proposed by Halliday's systemic functional grammar. The object of this study is president Trump's inaugural address.

3.3 Research procedures

I use AntConc to help me calculate the term frequency. First of all, from the perspective of mode, I need to calculate the numbers of declarative sentences, imperative sentences and interrogative sentences. As for the declarative sentences, I calculate the number of full-stop. As for the imperative sentences, I search the key words “let”, “do” as well as exclamation mark. As for the imperative sentences, I search interrogatives. Secondly, from the perspective of modality, now that I choose to use “will”, “must” and “can” to represent different modality, I need to calculate the times that the three words appear. Thirdly, when it comes to personal pronoun, I have to calculate the frequency of first personal pronoun, second personal pronoun and third personal pronoun. When I do this, plural form, nominative case, objective case and descriptive case are included. For example, when I calculate the frequency of first personal pronoun, I will calculate “I”, “me”, “my”, “we”, “us” and “our”. Finally, I make three tables to show the results more clearly.

1. Results and analysis

In this chapter I will show my research results and meantime analyze Trump’s inaugural speech from three aspects-mode system, modality system and personal pronoun system.

4.1 Mode system

Halliday (1994) believes that in the process of communication, no matter how the speakers change their roles, there are only two main roles -giving and demanding. In government speech, due to the speaker's special identity and mission, the comparison between the roles of "giving" information and "seeking" services the two main roles obviously. On the one hand, the speaker provides some information to the audience in order to know their attitude and stand. On the other hand, the speaker requests or call on the audience to take actions to support their claims and to follow their intentions and objectives. Therefore, declarative sentences dominate the speech, which mainly functioned as statements and few imperative moods to arouse both positive and negative feelings of the audience. In general, interrogative sentences are not used because the use of interrogative sentences may reduce the speech's solemnity and severity.

In Mood analysis, it can reveal the role of the speaker that he or she wants to be in the speech situation, and also the role that the speaker wants to assign to the hearer. Furthermore, in Modality analysis, it can reveal not only how the speaker views and thinks about the problem of the speech topic, but also the power relationship and the formality scale between the speaker and the hearer (Muhammad, 2020).

Table 3.1 Frequency of different types of mode

From the table 1, we can see that the declarative sentences account for the most times, followed by imperative and interrogative sentences at 100, 2 and 0 time respectively. Trump's speech is aimed at the people of the country. The purpose of Trump's speech is to win the audience's recognition of the leaders of the new government. Therefore, Trump uses the positive tone of statement to increase the objectivity and authenticity of his speech and make it more persuasive, which is why the interrogative tone does not appear. In this speech, Trump used imperative sentences twice. For example, do not allow anyone to tell you that it cannot be done. This sentence expresses Trump's advice and suggestions to the audience, aiming to boost morale and mobilize atmosphere to win support.

4.2 Modality system

Zhang (1998) holds that in discourse analysis, systemic functional linguistics believe that modality is the main means to realize interpersonal function, which can express individual's wishes, require others to undertake obligations, and judge the trend of development of things. Modality is expressed by the amount of modality. According to the speaker's attitude, judgment, mood, etc., the value of modality can be divided into low modality value, medium modality value, and high modality value, of which ‘must’ is the high value, ‘will’ is the middle value, and ‘can’ is a low value (Halliday, 1994).

Table 3.2 Frequency of different modality

Trump uses modal verbs to express modality in his speech. The upper table 2, shows that “will” appears 43 times, “must” 3 times, “can” once.

Will is not only a simple time sign of the future, but also a sign of willingness. The use of will is closely related to the purpose of political speech. Political speech often needs to express the speaker's strong will to complete a task, and call on the audience to have similar strong desire to complete the task together. For example, Trump says “We will get our people off of welfare and back to work, rebuilding our country with American hands and American labor.” He not only expresses his own political aim but also encourages the people that long for welfare and employment opportunities to work together with him. Now that Trump becomes the president, he will do some reforms. However, whatever he does, he has to call on people to take actions to support it.

There are only 3times of “must” in the text, but it also plays an important role. The tone of must is stronger than that of will. Must usually expresses an obligation to do something in order to arouse the sense of responsibility of the audience. For example, Trump says “We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies and destroying our jobs.” He gives orders instead of appeals to the people because in his mind to protect the country and people is an obligation, which shows his determination and authority when it comes to the interest of the country.

The modal verb-can not only expresses a lower degree of modality, but also reflects the possibility of expressing the ability to do something. For example, “No challenge can match the heart and fight and spirit of America.” When Trump uses can, it makes the tone softer which reduces its dominance and toughness and makes the audience easier to accept his ideas.

In short, in this inaugural address, Trump successfully expresses his political views to the audience, establishes his authority, call on the people to take actions and wins the trust of the audience.

4.3 Personal pronoun system

Hu (2000) believes that proper use of personal pronouns can help to establish a specific relationship between the author and the reader. The personal pronouns we used in speech discourse is helpful to establish and maintain interpersonal relationship between speaker and audience. From the following table 3, we can find that the first person pronoun is used the most, 103 times, followed by the third person pronoun, 30 times, and the second person pronoun, 25 times.

Table 3.3 Frequency of different types of personal pronouns

The first person singular ‘I’ is used to indicate the speaker's own identity, highlight his own existence, and more confidently express his views and attitudes (Zhang, 2012). For example, Trump says “The oath of office I take today is an oath of allegiance to all Americans.” He uses I to show his resolution that he is devoted to serving the people, so that he can win the audience’s trust.

In addition, although people generally divide the meaning of "we" into inclusive and exclusive. The former includes the listener, equivalent to “me and you”, but the latter does not include the listener, equivalent to “me and others not you” (Li, 2001). The use of inclusive "we" represent the United States, the U.S. government and the American people, which not only shows that they are speaking from the standpoint of the American people and for the sake of the fundamental interests of the people, but also reduces the feeling of constraint and hopes to gain more American people's identity.

请支付后下载全文，论文总字数：39449字