Abstract

This study is based on the two corpora each of which consists of inaugural addresses given by American presidents from the two political parties after World War Two. It employs Halliday’s theory about the interpersonal function and the methodology of Douglas Biber’s Multi-dimensional analysis. By analyzing the difference in the frequency by which various language features are used, which are mainly within the first dimension proposed by Douglas Biber, the interpersonal meaning which is expressed in the addresses of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party can be better comprehended. The statistics show that presidents from a different party utilize different language features to express their intimacy with the people, and that to a larger extent, modern presidents are more accessible than their predecessors.

KEYWORDS:American inaugural addresses; interpersonal function; Multi-dimension analysis; intimacy

摘　要

本文以二战后美国总统的就职演说组成的两个语料库为基础，综合运用Douglas Biber的多维度分析方法与Halliday的人际元语言功能概念，对比分析两党总统就职演说在语言特征上的差异。分析内容主要集中在多维度分析的第一维度——参与性与信息性维度上。本文通过比较语言特征的使用频率来解读现代美国民主党与共和党总统就职演说中的人际信息意义及其表现，数据分析结果显示，民主党和共和党用各自不同的语言表达显示自己的亲民性，并且在总的趋势上，现代总统比五六十年代的总统更为亲民。

关键词:就职演说；人际功能；多维度分析；亲民性

1    Introduction
1.1    Background information
Every four years in the USA during normal times, an inaugural address will be delivered by a new president at the inauguration ceremony. This is a big day for the president not only to publicize his political creeds but also a once-in-life opportunity to show his personal charisma. The whole world, rather than being limited within the boundary of the USA, will pay great attention to the moment of inauguration. Undoubtedly, the inaugural address takes the most phenomenal role throughout the whole inaugural ceremony, for it speaks for the American nation to the world of their national pride and firm belief in capitalism and freedom. The significance of the address entails that everything, from its tenor to diction, from its sentence pattern to the text organization, should be exact, powerful and convincing. In a word, inaugural addresses are not just the reflection of the president’s thoughts, but are more about the wisdom of the nation’s top intellectuals. Hence, it is natural that inaugural addresses have become one of the most popular research targets in the fields of linguistics, stylistics, even religion and so on.