文献综述
1. Introduction1.1 Research backgroundPolitical speech, as a special form of speech, has attracted the attention of linguists at home and abroad. Politicians make speeches in front of the public to explain their political ideas and principles, to inspire the people and closer ties with them. Therefore, the language of their speeches is often extraordinary and impressive, and it is meaningful to study the inherent meaning of political speeches. The American presidents inaugural address is a typical political speech. After the new American president is elected, he will take this opportunity to express his political statement and explain his values, with the intention of inspiring the people and gaining their support. The inaugural speech was refined and logical. Since the inaugural address is addressed to the American people, it has rich interpersonal significance.Appraisal theory was put forward by James R. Martin and his colleagues in the 1990s. Appraisal theory is a complementary theory of interpersonal meta-function in systemic-functional linguistics, which has developed vigorously at home and abroad in recent years. Within the framework of appraisal theory, Peng (2010) discusses the attitude and intervention resources in Obamas first inaugural address. Sun (2011) takes Obamas first inaugural speech as the research object, conducts discourse analysis within the framework of appraisal theory, and discusses the distribution characteristics of evaluation resources in the speech. Systemic-functional grammar reveals interpersonal relationships through mood and modality. However, traditional systemic-functional grammar does not work when it comes to analyzing readers or listeners opinions and attitudes towards events. Martin, a linguist, realized this problem and put forward the appraisal theory at the end of the 20th century, which can be used to analyze readers or listeners views and attitudes towards events.1.2 Need of the studyTraditional systemic functional linguistics does not really study the role of lexical meaning in interpersonal function. Martin fills this gap and constructs a relatively perfect evaluation system. Appraisal theory, which mainly focuses on people, is a supplement to Hallidays interpersonal meta-function. Appraisal theory has adequately strong explanatory power to the language with evaluation function, which enriches and perfects the theory of systemic functional linguistics and makes it more vigorous and vitality. Under the guidance of evaluation theory, this paper aims to make a comparative analysis of Obama, Trump and Bidens first inaugural speeches from the attitude subsystem. Through comparative analysis, it is helpful to have a deeper understanding of the inaugural speeches of Obama, Trump and Biden, and also to deepen the understanding of other presidents inaugural speeches. Using qualitative and quantitative research methods, this paper analyzes the distribution of attitude resources in Obama, Trump and Bidens inaugural speeches, and explores how the three presidents use these attitude resources to persuade people to support them. This paper can help learners fully understand how the American president effectively realizes his interpersonal intention through persuasive language and how to use these evaluation resources to achieve his political purpose. This paper also has a certain reference for politicians speeches and even ordinary peoples speeches in the future. The three American presidents selected in this paper are very distinctive. Obama is the first African American president in American history. Before trump became president of the United States, he was known to the public as a successful businessman. It can be said that he became president dramatically from a political outsider. Biden, on the contrary to Trump, has rich political experience. Therefore, learners can understand some American social culture through the presidential inaugural speech, which is also conducive to learners language learning and improve their language skills.1.3 Research purposesThe purpose of this study includes three aspects:Firstly, this paper will use the first inaugural addresses of Obama, Trump and Biden as the language materials used in the research. Combined with the appraisal theory, this paper will compare and analyze the inaugural speeches from the aspects of lexical richness, readability and emotion, and summarize the speech characteristics of the three presidents. This paper will help people deepen their understanding of American presidential inaugural speech.Then, find out the distribution of attitude resources in Obama, Trump and Bidens inaugural speeches, analyze the similarities and differences of attitude resources in inaugural speeches, reveal how the three presidents use these attitude resources to persuade people to support themselves, and then explore the relationship between politicians power, consciousness and language.The third purpose is to summarize the speech skills used by politicians in speech, so as to provide help for language learners to improve their language skills, and to provide certain reference for politicians speeches and even ordinary peoples speeches in the future.1.4 Organization of the thesisThis paper is divided into six chapters.Chapter one is the introduction. It mainly includes research background, research purposes, need of the study and organization of the thesis. Through a brief introduction, it is convenient for readers to understand the research status of the presidential inaugural address and appraisal theory at home and abroad, as well as the value and significance of this topic.The second chapter is literature review. First of all, this paper reviews the domestic and foreign researches on American presidential inaugural speeches. Then it reviews the researches on appraisal theory at home and abroad.Chapter three is the theoretical framework. This chapter introduces the appraisal theory in detail, including three subsystems of appraisal theory and their development. At the same time, the focus is on the introduction of attitude resources into appraisal theory. Attitude resources have three subsystems: affect, judgment and appreciation, which are introduced in detail in this paper.The fourth chapter is methodology. It consists of research methods, data resources, data collection and research processes. Firstly, the research questions of this study are put forward. On this basis, the details of the data are collected from different angles and the research procedures are designed. This chapter mainly introduces qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis.Chapter five is an analysis of the first inaugural addresses of Obama, Trump and Biden. First of all, the paper compares the lexical complexity and readability of the three presidential inaugural speeches, and makes a detailed analysis of the three presidential inaugural speeches based on the attitude resources in appraisal theory. Then this chapter focuses on the comparative analysis of Obama, Trump and Bidens inaugural speeches from the perspective of affect, judgment and appreciation.The last chapter is the conclusion. This chapter summarizes the main research results, explains the significance of the study, then expounds the limitations of this study, and puts forward reasonable suggestions for future research.2. Literature Review2.1 Previous studies on American Presidential Inaugural AddressesAmerican presidential inaugural address (APIA) refers to the first formal public speech delivered by a newly elected president in front of American people. It plays a crucial role in the political life of the newly elected president. This is a great opportunity for the newly elected president to illustrate his political ideas and values to American people and to close the relationship with people through his inaugural speech. As it is of great importance, many scholars have studied APIA from various perspectives.Some scholars study U.S. presidential inaugural addresses from a political, historical, or psychological perspective. For example, when the famous political scientist Baber (1977) analyzed the writings and words of the American president, he focused most on commonsense assumptions about personal identity and character. According to Baber, its mostly the presidents ideology and psychology that shapes his mark on actions and words. Lee (1996) points out that in the course of two centuries, inaugural speeches have been used more and more as a governing tool. Whitehead and Smith (1999) use strategic self- presentation theory to compare the performance of modern and traditional American presidents in inaugural speeches.Other scholars have studied us presidential inaugural addresses from a linguistic perspective. Campbell and Jamieson (1990) analyzed the apparent features of the American presidential inaugural address from the perspective of rhetoric, Identified the basic elements and four functions that reflect the essential features of the American presidential inaugural address, and believed that the presidential inaugural address is actually a kind of apparent ceremony, characterized by form, persuasion, unity and eloquence. Brownstein (2009) studied Obamas first inaugural address based on a political science survey. Pantages (2009) cited Obamas 2009 inaugural speech and believed that most of what Obama said in his 2009 inaugural speech was related to the National Environmental Health Association and the environmental health profession.In China, the Inaugural address of the President of the United States has also attracted extensive attention from scholars, and many scholars have conducted extensive research from various angles. Xiong (2004) studied APIA from the perspective of stylistics. Her thesis was based on Hallidays functional stylistic theory, especially his theories of context and foregrounding. The detailed analysis was at the lexical level, syntactic level, rhetorical level and textual level. In order to ensure the reliability of the analysis, ten American presidential inaugural addresses after World War II were presented. Zi (2005) examined the inaugural addresses and reasoned out the change and the continuity behind the addresses. American spirits and power of constitution was unchangeable. But the change of political system could be found. Weng (2006) explored the intertextuality of APIA. The thesis presented that there were fourteen categories of intertextuality in American presidential inaugural addresses and revealed that the important functions of using these intertextual relationships. Liu (2008) who did research on APIA from the perspective of political conceptual metaphors. According to Liu, presidential inaugural addresses were filled with heavy religious features. In order to inspire and persuade public people, there were also various figures of speech in presidential inaugural addresses, such as, alliteration, parallelism, repetition and metaphor. Twenty American presidential inaugural addresses from 1929 to 2006 were analyzed in this thesis. Wang (2013) who analyzed the discourse of APIA from a brand-new perspective, the perspective of computational stylistics at lexical level. With the help of computer software, some important style markers were analyzed, including word length, sentence length, high frequency words and common words. The thesis summarized the computational stylistic features of APIA. According to the above literature review, fewer researches are made from the perspective of Appraisal Theory.2.2 Previous studies on Appraisal TheoryAppraisal theory, as a supplementary theory of interpersonal meta-function in systemic-functional linguistics, has developed rapidly in recent years. Appraisal theory, also known as appraisal system, is a set of resources for expressing attitude through language, including three main systems: attitude, involvement and difference, with innovative consciousness, consistency, generality and explanatory power.First of all, appraisal theory is widely used in the analysis of media discourse, including news discourse, news reporting style, news commentary and so on. Media discourse research is the most active field in the application of appraisal theory. In his doctoral dissertation (1998), Peter White used appraisal theory to conduct a systematic study of news discourse, which mainly focused on the social evaluation conveyed by news reports and the positioning of texts to the authors voice and readers. He identified the interpersonal patterns of three distinct news reporting styles, that is, the 'voice' of news, that is, the voice of journalist and the voice of commentator, and summarized the specific characteristics of these voices. Some of his research can be found on the website he founded.Evaluation theory is also applied in academic discourse analysis. Hood Susan (2010) used the evaluation theory to analyze the academic works in the doctoral dissertation. Her research mainly focuses on the introduction of academic papers to explore how to explain the evaluation positions in these texts semantically. She also summarizes a series of evaluation strategies used by academic writers in academic works. Her research has made outstanding contributions to the development of appraisal theory.In addition to the above aspects, Yang (2003) studied the evaluation methods in texts. He believes that evaluative meaning is the result of the simultaneous operation of all systems. He believes that the number of evaluative resources in a text can reflect the degree of desire of the author or the speaker to express the attitude, and these evaluative resources can help us identify the thoughts of language users. Guan (2006) discussed participatory resources in speech under the guidance of evaluation theory. This helps to deepen the understanding of their subject matter. Chen (2002) applied appraisal theory to vocabulary construction. She believes that appraisal theory can help students, especially those above intermediate level, overcome the problems of vocabulary rigidity and vocabulary memory rigidity, and construct the semantic network necessary for vocabulary output.References:Baber, J. D. (1977). The Presidential Character: Predicting Presidential Performance in the White House. NJ: Prentice Hall.Brownstein, R. (2009). Political Connections: Barack Obamas Inaugural Address. National Journal, 41.Campbell, K., amp; Jamieson, K. (1990). Deeds Done in Words: Presidential Rhetoric and the Genres of Governance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Hood S. (2010). Appraising Research: Evaluation in Academic Writing. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Lee, S. (1996). 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