The University commencement speech is one type of public speaking. Manystudies have been conducted on public speaking from different aspects. In thestudies of public speeches, much particular attention is paid to politicalspeeches to reveal power and authority of speakers and manifest the politicalstatus and how speakers try to establish effective speech relationship withaudiences to realize their various aims through language means. Regrettably,little attention is paid to the studies of commencement speeches. TheUniversity commencement speech is one of important parts of graduationactivities, as it is the last gift from university pinning educational dreamfor those graduated students who begin to climb into society. It is also aspeech given to graduating students by an important speaker in spades like thecurrent president of the university in china, but the president of the country,a powerful politician, a famous advertising writer, a knowledgeable scientistor a successful leader of a famous company and so on in America. Therefore,Chinese and American universities pay much attention on universitycommencements. As we all know, many people have great expectations and blessingto the graduates who have studied in schools for many years and it is time forthem to climb into society. So just before their graduation , it is a necessityto encourage them to face the reality and shoulder the society responsibility.

Previous studies have shown that successfulcommencements have had a great impact on students’ follow-up study, life, etc.However, both them of university commencement speeches based anthropology,stylistics, system-functional linguistics and grammar. So there are few thesisaccording to the Chinese and American culture differences. By investigating thecommencement speeches of some famous Chinese and American universities like CornellUniversity, Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, XiamenUniversity, Shanghai Jiaotong University and Huazhong University Science andTechnology, this paper researches the culture differences reflected speech’s patterns,structures interior and contents of Chinese and American university commencements.Besides, because of the special status and rich experience of those speakers,their speeches will be considered influential and instructive to the graduatingstudents. That is the reason why this thesis intends to investigate thecommencement speeches and intends to find what kind of speeches are employed torealize the function of commencement speeches.

2. 研究的基本内容与方案

1 The purpose and significance of the research

2 The evolution of Chinese and AmericanUniversity Commencement Speeches

3 Differences of Chinese and American University Commencement Speeches

3.1 Speech patterns

3.2 Structures interior and contents

4 Influencing factors

4.1 Identities ofspeakers

4.1.1 gender