ABSTRACT

Language is not just the expression of the speaker’s own experience and his/her changes of the mental activity, but also reflects the speaker’s position, attitude, motivation, and his judgment and evaluation, and so on. Halliday believes that the interpersonal function can be realized through the framework of lexico-grammatical, which is through mood system, modality system and personal pronoun system. 

Political speech has a pivotal position in the domestic and international affairs. It is also an important means for the national leaders to elaborate the position, attitude and view of the political affairs at home and abroad. What is more, political speech is a special formal style, and the language has its specific normative and features. 

In this paper, we conduct a contrastive study of interpersonal functions between Chinese and English political speeches. Toward this end, 10 political speeches, five Chinese ones, and five English ones, by the state leaders of China and America, were collected. The chosen discourses are analyzed from three perspectives: mood system, modality system and personal pronoun system. 

Chinese political speeches used indicative and imperative mood, while English political speeches used all the three types of mood to express the political purpose. Chinese political speeches would like to use more high and low value of modality while English political speeches would prefer to use medium and low value of modality. Both Chinese and English political speeches used the first person pronoun, the second person pronoun and the third person pronoun. But the operating frequencies are different, so the interpersonal meaning of the speeches is also different.

Key Words: interpersonal function; political speech; mood system; modality system; personal pronoun

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABSTRACT

摘要

Chapter One  INTRODUCTION-1

1.1 Research Background and Purpose-1

1.2 Layout of the Thesis-2

Chapter Two  LITERATURE REVIEW-3

2.1 Systemic Functional Grammar-3

2. 2 Previous Studies on Political Speeches-4

2.3 Previous Studies on Interpersonal Function-4

Chapter Three  METHODOLOGY-7

3.1 Research Questions-7

3.2Data Collection-7

Chapter Four  FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS-9

4.1 Mood-9

4.1.1 Common mood types in Chinese and English political speeches-10

4.1.2 Differences in mood types in Chinese and English Political Speeches-13

4.2 Modality-14

4.2.1 Common modality types in Chinese and English political speeches-15

4.2.2 Differences in modality types in Chinese and English political speeches-16

4.3 Personal Pronouns-19

4.3.1 Common personal pronoun types in Chinese and English political speeches-20

4.3.2 Differences in personal pronoun types in Chinese and English political speeches-21

Chapter Five  CONCLUSION-23

5.1 Major Findings-23

5.2 Limitations of the Study-24

REFERNCES-26