of the State ofUnionand recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary
and expedient.”(http://en.wikipedia.org)It is an effective weapon for the
president of theUSto win over the public and exert pressure on Congress .The address not only
reports on the condition of the nation but also allows the president to outline
his legislative agenda. As a result, the language used in the presidential
State of the Union Address is subtle and tactful. For the reason that it is
broadcast more widely by modern science and technology, its influence
increases. The general public of theUnited Statesand other people
around the world, care about it because this speech outlines the major
political tendency and economic measures in the following year. In a word, this
speech affect a lot around the world. With the increasing influence of
political speeches on the relationship between political figures and the
general public, more and more scholars pay attention to the political speeches.
Generally speaking, political speeches are usually delivered in an inspiring
manner so as to influence the audience’s attitude and persuade the audience to
take the desired actions. State of the Union Address is an annual address presented
by the President of theUnited
Statesto the United States Congress. It is
an important form of public speech that deserves special attention. However, at
present, regardless of its importance in society and precious linguistic value,
it is received rare attention. The present study is conducted with a view to
full this gap. This thesis attempts to observe State of the Union Address in
view of interpersonal function in the framework of the Systemic Functional
Linguistics, thus further proving the explanatory power of functional grammar
in this particular kind of discourses. The analysis of this paper will throw
light on the styles and strategies the presidents adopted when delivering the
State of the Union Address so as to enable people to have a further understanding
in appreciating State of the Union Address .In this research, the data used to
be analyzed were collected from www.thisnation.com, 2010 and 2011State of the
Union Address by Barack Obama.
3. Functional Stylistics and
interpersonal function
Functional stylistics is a branch
of modern stylistic theory. It originates in the 1970s when its representative,
Halliday, published his thesis “Linguistic Functions and Literary Style: An
inquiry into the language of William Golding's" The Inheritors"”. Functional
stylistics takes the function of language as central, i.e. what language does，and how it does，and starts from social context and considers language both acting
upon，and being constrained by this social
context.(Halliday,2000)In functional view, language and context are
interdependent. At a broader level, our experience in the world clearly
influence what we normally talk about and the way we talk about it. At the same
time, the way we normally talk about these experiences influences the way we see
them.(Thompson,2009:9) Halliday argues that language identifies three
metafunctions of language, which are of the same importance. The first is the
ideational function, using language to talk about people's experience of the
world. The second
