英语论文—肯尼迪就职演讲修辞分析.doc

IntroductionStylistics is the study of language style with modern linguistic theories and approaches. Functional stylistic theory is one of the most influential theories in recent years, when linguistics lays much emphasis on the social-cultural context. The American Presidential Inaugural Address (APIA) is a very important variety with worldwide influence and long-lasting significance. In the address the speaker makes great efforts to make his policy known to the public and to persuade the public to accept and support his policies. To achieve the aims, the address has to resort to lots of language skills among other things. Therefore, a stylistic study on APIA is extremely meaningful. In the paper, the writer attempts to apply the theories of functional stylistics into the analysis of American president Kennedys address, trying to find out the linguistic characteristics of the particular discourse and explain and evaluate them with the theories.1. An Introduction to American Presidential Inaugural Address The inaugural address is the speech delivered by the president-elected on the inauguration day.In the speech, for the first time, the newly elected president will officially announce that he will take up that the responsibility as the highest executive of the country in the next four years. Inaugurals mark the end of the election campaign and at the same time the beginning of a new administration. Although the inaugural address is not required by the constitution, it is made every four years by all the presidents before they take office. It has already become a tradition set by the first presidentGeorge Washington. As a rule, the new administrators philosophy of politics and the outline of his policy will be announced in his inaugural address. The inauguration is held as a celebration witnessed by many audiences.Inaugurals are of great significance because of what they reveal about the fundamental political values, particular political principles, and enactment of a presidential persona. Their political meanings thus become clear. Inaugural addresses attempt to persuade the citizens of the nation on that the newly elected president is fit for the political role and that he is entitled to achieve his programmatic objectives. The addresses, then, cast much light on the legitimacy of political power and the worldviews of presidents. Their political intention is to call for support and loyalty to a political regime from both other power-holders in the political system and the public at large during their administration.2. An Introduction to Functional StylisticsThe functional linguistic theory advocated by British linguist, M. A. K. Halliday has been prevailing since the 1970s. It is widely used in stylistic analysis. Functional stylistics has three features: first, stressing the relationship between the text and the context of the situation, and advocating studying the style in the social-cultural context; second, adopting systematic-functional grammar in stylistic analysis; third, summarizing the foregrounding theory systematically. Systematic-functional grammar is a very useful approach to stylistic analysis to some extent, and the theory about context is widely accepted. “Context of situation” is originally suggested by Malinowski and subsequently elaborated by Firth in his 1950 paper Personality and language in society. Essentially what this implies is that language comes to life only when functioning in some environment. According to Halliday, the situation is the environment in which the text comes to life. The type of the language, which is selected as appropriate to the type of situation, is a register. He said, “A register can be defined as the configuration of semantic resources that the member of a culture typically associates with a situation type. It is the meaning potential that is accessible in a given social context.” (Halliday, 2001:111) He further distinguishes three social variables that determine the register: field of discourse, tenor of discourse, and mode of discourse. The field is the social action in which the text is embedded; it includes the subject-matter, as one special manifestation. The tenor is the set of the role relationships among the relevant participants; it includes levels of formality as one particular instance. The mode refers to the medium or way that the communication between people goes. People usually see speaking and writing as the medium.As far as APIA is concerned, the field of the APIA is political since the newly inaugurated president often uses this address to lay out goals and principles, address the nations divisions, beliefs, achievements, domestic and world-wide situations, and project Americans place in the world or future expectation.The tenor of the APLA can be displayed in the following way. The participants in the event are the President of the United States, as an addresser, and all the government officials and all the citizens in the country and even people all over the world, as the addressee.The mode of the APLA is also distinct in the situation. In the situation, every word in the address plays a constitutive role. The speech has to fulfill some functions, or convey the presidents attentions, i.e. to make his government policies known to the public and persuade the public to accept and support his government. So the language used in the context is mainly informative and persuasive.3. A Stylistic Study on Kennedy s Inaugural AddressThe following analysis aims to reveal the stylistic features of the American presidential inaugural address. It is mainly based on M. A. K. Hallidays functional stylistic theories, especially on his theories about “context”. It also adopts some other commonly accepted linguistic theories. Systematic investigation of the linguistic data is a characteristic of this paper. The analysis is mainly concerned with the lexical level, syntactic level, textual level and rhetorical devices. Because of the close relation between speech skill and rhetorical devices, the analysis on the rhetorical device is also a part of this paper.3.1 The Stylistic Features on the Lexical LevelWord is a basic grammatical unit, which is smaller than sentence. This analysis will begin with the analysis on the lexical level.3.1.1 Word Structure Stylisticians usually set six letters or three syllables in a word as a standard to analyze the length of the words. The words with more than six letters are usually regarded as long words. These long words may be words of Latin, French or Greek origin, which are usually formal words. And they may also be derivation or compounding words, which have relatively complicated structure.John Fitzgerald Kennedys inaugural speech has a total vocabulary of 1595, of which there is 438 words with more than six letters, accounting for 26%. In English，the words of more than six letters or three syllable are often seen as big. These words often come from the Latin, Greek or French, or have a complex internal structure. “The percentages in daily conversation, instant commentary, and even advertisement are not more than 20%”.( Wang Zuoliang, 1987:235) So comparatively speaking, the words used in inaugural address of Kennedy are quite formal and the structures of the words are more complicated. There are two reasons for this. First, the president deliberately uses formal words to make his speeches more serious. E.g.: prosperity, discrimination, obligation. Then, the intrinsic structures of the words are quite complicated. There are many derivational or compounding words. The derivation from verbs to nouns is a characteristic of the language in the addresses. We can find many such words: affirmation, aggression, celebration. These derivations not only help to form long words with more complicated structures, but also make the words in the address more formal.There is a long lasting dispute that whether public speaking is a spoken variety or a written one. The above analysis on the lexical level shows clearly that as one type of public speaking, American presidential address embodies more features of a written variety, which is characteristic of long, complicated, formal words. These features correspond with the tenor of discourse: both consultative and formal, and mode of discourse: written to be spoken.Besides that, in Kennedys address we can find many abstract nouns with such suffixes as: -tion, -ment, -cy, -ty, for they usually refer to the state, quality, cause or result of an action. This phenomenon is determined by the field of discourse. American presidential inaugural address is one type of public political speaking. Its field of discourse is political. Many political terms are abstract. It is natural for Kennedy to use many abstract nouns in his address.3.1.2 Word ClassThe choice of word class is determined mainly by the tenor.The functional tenor of inaugural address is both persuasive and informative. In the inaugural address, the speaker is not only to make his government policies known to the public, but also to persuade the public to accept and support his policy. So like advertisements, inaugural address belongs to a loaded language, which triggers emotional reaction. It should have great persuasive power. So the words used in the inaugural address usually contain emotional color. This is reflected especially in the use of adjectives and the first-person pronoun.AdjectivesThe use of adjectives in the address is mainly determined by the functional tenor of the language. In the address of Kennedy, there are 105 adjectives, accounting nearly 7.8% in the total words of 1342. This percentage is obviously higher than that instant commentary, which is 5%. (Wang Zuoliang，1987:221) Most of the adjectives are subjective and emotional words, such as: fruitful, peaceful, great, powerful, solemn, hard, steady.This is determined by the functional tenor of the presidential address. In these address the speaker is expected to make their government policies known to the public and to persuade the public to accept and support his policy. In order to achieve these aims, the speaker often resorts to emotional appeal among other things. Adjectives are very useful in expressing ones emotion, so the speaker uses so many adjectives in the address. Comparatively, there are fewer adjectives in the instant commentary, which is more objective than the inaugural address.On the other hand, the percentage of adjectives is much smaller than that of the advertisement, which is about 30%. (Qin Xiubai, 2002: 309) This is because as a political address with worldwide influence, American presidential address is much more serious than advertisements. Preaching political views is different from promoting goods. It should seem more subjective and could not be too garish.The First-person PronounAnother noticeable fact in the presidential address is the use of the first-person pronouns, which is determined by the personal tenor of the inaugural address.The most frequently used pronouns are the first-person pronouns: I, we and their derivational forms: me, us, and our etc. In most of situation, Kennedy used lots of first-person pronouns to substitute the second-person pronoun you.(1) We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution.(2) Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our life time on this planet. But let us begin.Because the speaker usually mentions himself and his opinions, it is very natural for him to use I or me frequently. We or us in English are the form referring to both the speaker plus the audience. In the inaugural address, the speaker frequently uses we, us, and our instead for you or yours. This creates some special effects.First, the inclusive pronouns unite the speaker and the audience. They are helpful to build a sense of closeness between the speaker and the audience. The American president appears to be one member among ordinary American citizens. Thus the speech becomes more intimate, and more acceptable.Second, the first person plural can encourage a sense of group unity, a feeling of cohesiveness. “This practice minimizes differences within our group, and emphasizes between group members and those on the outside”. (Lucas, Stephen E, 2004:98) For example in Kennedys address, he said, “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friends, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” The first person plurals: we, us in this sentence distinguish American people from the other nations, encourage a sense of group unity, awaken a sense of national pride and responsibility, thus make the speech very inciting.In addition, “the first-person plural in declarative structure can also perform an imperative function”. (Wang Zuoliang，1987:267) This indirect imperative form is implicit and much easier to accept. For example, “We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution.” If we rewrite the above sentences with imperative sentences, they may sound more like orders than requests, and then widen the gap between the speaker and the audience. Thus the inciting effect cannot be achieved.3.2 The Stylistic Features on the Syntactical LevelTraditionally, a sentence is seen as a sequence of words. How words are combined to form sentence to achieve the stylistic effects in APIA of Kennedy will be discussed in this part. The discussion will include the sentence structure, the postmodification in noun phrase, tense in verb phrase, and imperative sentences.3.2.1 Sentence Structure The average sentence length of different variety is different. According to Wang Zuoliangs analysis, “the average sentence length of daily conversation is less than 12 words per sentence”. (Wang Zuoliang, 1987:247) The sentence length of legal document is much longer. Most sentences in legal document contain more than 40 words. Generally speaking, the longer the sentence length is, the more formal the variety is. “The average sentence length of all varieties is 17.8 words per sentence”. (Wang Zuoliang, 1987:245) Short sentence is the characteristic of spoken language.From the sentence length in terms of John F. Kennedy in his inaugural speech of 1342 words, with a total sentence of number 52, the average sentence length of 25.8 words. Of these, the number of sentences containing 1-9 words is 7, accounting for 13.5 percent of the total number; with 10-19 words of the sentence has 13, accounting for 25%; with 20-29 words of the sentence has 17, accounting for the total number of 32.7%; with 30-39 words of the sentence there are five, accounting for 9.6%; containing more than 40 words sentence 10. These figures indicate that the average sentence length of Kennedys address is longer than that of daily conversation, but shorter than news report, much shorter than legal document. And it is near the average sentence length of all varieties.Judging from the types of sentences, simple sentence has 20, accounting for 38.5 percent sentence of the total number; compound sentence has four, accounting for 7.7%; complex sentences are 28, even up to 53.8%. The above data show that Kennedys speech is mainly based on the complex sentences, followed by a simple sentence, compound sentence the least.From the above statistics about the length and type of the sentences, we can conclude that the sentence structure of American presidential address is characteristic of formal written language while exhibiting features of spoken language. This is determined by its tenor of speech. American president delivers the inaugural address to the people at home or abroad when he takes office. He has good education background, and the situation of inauguration is quite formal. In the address the orator are expected to make his government policy known to the public and to persuade the public to accept and support his policy. These personal tenor and functional tenor determine that inaugural address should not be as casual as daily conversation, and it is unnecessary to be as serious as news report and legal document.It is also influenced by the mode of the speech. The address is well prepared in advance in the form of written language, so it is possible to make long and well-structured complicated sentences, which manifest the characteristics of written language. On the other hand, the address is to be spoken. Then, too long and complicated sentences, such as the sentences with more than 40 words, may make trouble for the orator to speaker and for the audience to understand. So most sentences in the address are in middle-length with 10-30 words per sentence.Short sentences are usually emphatic, whereas long sentences are capable of expressing complex ideas with precision, because it may contain more modifiers. Involving such amount of short sentences, long sentences in the address is not only helpful to stress the ideas that should be stressed, but also helpful to achieve a variety of sentence pattern, length and rhythm, thus avoid monotony.3.2.2 Postmodification in Noun PhraseThe majority of noun phrases consist of a head noun plus one or two optional elements. These optional elements refer to premodifier and postmodifier. Premodifier refers to the determiners, numbers, pronouns, and adjectives, or nouns with an adjectival function, which appear to the left of the head noun. Postmodifier refers to the phrases or clauses that appear to the right of the head noun. Most of the premodifiers are simple, thus save space. Some types of text, such as adverts, newspaper headlines, frequently use premodifications. The postmodification keeps the head noun in the front of part of the