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emselves and how they wish to present themselves. Li Zhangzi (2002) points out: The interpersonal metafunction of language serves to describe the information between persons. In other words, it expresses the speaker’s identity, status, attitude, motivation, and his inference of matters.
Among many interpretations of interpersonal function given by the linguists, Thompson’s definition is the most comprehensive. He considers interpersonal function of language is used to interact with other people, to establish and maintain relations with them, to influence their attitude or behavior, to express their viewpoints, and to elicit or change theirs (Thompson, 2000).
As to presidential inaugural address, Gronbeck (1994) defines the inauguration is “a series of symbolic acts undertaken since ancient ages by virtually all cultures in moments of change in leadership”; it“ links past with present and even future in symbolic acts of remembrance, legitimation and celebration”. On the inauguration day, the new president articulates his fundamental political principles and political policies in his next four-year presidency in his inaugural address, portraying a bright future, setting goals for newly-elected administration. Thus it is used by the president as a call for support and loyalty to a political regime. According to the Swales (1990), political inaugural address, as a type of English public speeches, is a verbal transmission of messages from the newly elected president to the audience who are assembled. Therefore, political inaugural address is a communicative event with its special purposes.
As one type of political speeches, presidential inaugural speeches have their own features. The basic characteristic is their strong political tendency full of logical thoughts and inciting tactics. The communicative purpose of political inaugural address is to affect the audience to the extent that they believe the speaker’s messages, or they are inspired by the speaker’s words and moved to action. We can see inaugural address is a persuasive genre, in which the speaker tries to influence the audience and convince them that what the speaker is saying or planning is on their behalf so that they should support him.
Then let’s look at some studies of presidential inaugural address both abroad and at home.
The first aspect is from the rhetoric perspective. Chilton and Schaffner (1997) pointed out that rhetoric is the art of verbal persuasion. The study was carried out by Greek and Roman. Scholars like Bitzer (1981), Partington (2003), and Van Dijk (2005) have also studied inaugural speeches from this perspective. In China, Guo Xiumei (1984) pointed out: “the speakers gain support by use of rhetorics, and finally achieve their political power”. Zhang Yufang, Yao Xueli analyzed the importance of rhetorics to political speech. In addition, Yang Rong (2004) and Fei Teng (2006) carried out a research of presidential inaugural address from the perspective of stylistics.
Inaugural addresses are also studied from the systemic-functional grammar perspective. Chilton and Schaffner (1997) have made the greatest contribution to the research of political discourse from the perspective of discourse analysis. In China, based on the theories of Halliday’s systemic functional grammar, theory of discourse analysis, Chen Youjun (2006) used Bush’s inauguration speeches as an example to demonstrate how interpersonal function is generally realized in a p