An Analysis of Oprah Winfrey’s Speech at the 75th Golden Globes from the Perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics_英语论文

摘要

美国第75届金球奖旨在支持以抵抗职场性骚扰、性侵为目的的倡议行动Time's up。而且，奥普拉温弗瑞的演讲引起了国际社会的普遍关注与好评。

到目前为止，只有少数几个学者从语言学相关理论的角度对这篇演讲进行研究，而且他们只是从人际功能或者经验功能或者语篇功能的角度对其进行研究。因此，该文以系统功能语言学为主要的理论基础和分析方法, 研究了该演讲在语言上如何通过及物性系统实现概念功能, 如何通过人称代词、语气系统和时态实现人际功能。而且，本文通过分析演讲中的词语、短语和句子结构以及语篇等研究奥普拉是如何巧妙地运用语言来达到其演讲的目的的。本文试图采用定性的研究方法，通过分析奥普拉的演讲回答以下问题：奥普拉在第75届金球奖颁奖典礼上的演讲从及物性过程、人称代词、语气、时态等方面体现了怎样的经验意义和人际意义？研究结果发现，在经验功能方面，奥普拉主要通过关系过程、物质过程以及心理过程实现经验意义；在人际功能方面，奥普拉主要通过第一人称代词、陈述句以及现在时态来叙述故事，呼吁广大女性勇敢说出自己的悲惨遭遇。除此之外，作者希望此文章能为接下来的研究提供一定的参考价值。

关键字：系统功能语言学  75届金球奖演讲  经验功能  人际功能  

Abstract

The 75th Golden Globes is designed to support Time's up, an initiative to combat sexual harassment and assault in the workplace. And Oprah Winfrey’s speech attracts widespread attention and praise from the international community.

So far, only a few scholars have studied this speech from the perspective of the interpersonal or experiential or textual metafunction. Therefore, this paper is theoretically and analytically based on Systemic Functional Linguistics and explores how the speech can realize the experiential metafunction through the transitivity system and realize the interpersonal metafunction through the personal pronoun, mood and tense. Besides, this paper analyzes how Oprah in the speech skillfully uses the language to achieve the purpose of her speech through analyzing the words, phrases and sentence structure and discourse. This paper attempts to use qualitative research method to answer how the experiential meaning and interpersonal meaning are realized in Oprah Winfrey’s Speech at the 75th Golden Globes in terms of transitivity processes, personal pronouns, mood and tense. The study found that Oprah mainly realizes the experiential meaning through relational processes, material processes and mental processes and tells the story through the first person pronouns, the declarative sentences and the present tense to call on women to bravely speak out their own tragic experiences and the author hopes to provide reference for the following research.

Key words: Systemic Functional Linguistics  75th Golden Globes speech  experiential metafunction  interpersonal metafunction

Contents

Chapter One  Introduction1

Chapter Two  Literature Review4

Chapter Three  Theoretical Framework8

3.1  Three Metafunctions of Systemic Functional Linguistics8

3.2  Experiential Metafunction.9

3.3  Interpersonal Metafunction.9

Chapter Four  Metafunctional Analysis of Oprah Winfrey’s Speech at the 75th Golden Globes11

4.1  Brief Introduction of Six Processes.11

4.2  Analysis of Six Processes13

4.3  Interpersonal Meaning Realized Through Personal Pronouns17

4.4  Interpersonal Meaning Realized Through Mood21

4.5  Analysis of Tenses.23

Chapter Five  Conclusion28

Bibliography

Appendices

Acknowledgments