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Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Research Questions
Public speeches have been being studied by scholars of various fields for severalthousand years. We do not know what the first public speech was like, but we do know thatsome of history's greatest leaders, from Julius Caesar, to Charlemagne, to AbrahamLincoln, have been renowned for their ability to stir people's emotions through their words.There are different types of public speeches according to different criteria.According to their general purposes，public speeches fall into three categories: informative,entertaining and persuasive. In terms of formality, speeches can be formal and informal. Asfar as the channel is concerned, there are impromptu speeches, extemporaneous speeches,and speeches written to be spoken.Political speech is one sub-category of public speech. However, until now there hasbeen no consensus on what is a political speech, and even what is “political” is a matter ofinterpretation. The speaker, usually on behalf of a certain class or party, the state orgovernment, makes a speech to an audience on some important domestic and/or foreignmatters and relationships. Different from other literary types, political speech has distinctfeatures. First it presents sound political opinions. Second, it attracts the audience and setsthem thinking. Third，political speech aims to persuade the audience to accept the speaker'sviewpoints as well as to encourage the audience to do what the speaker wants them to do.No matter how overwhelming, charming or eloquent the speaker is，he always endeavors to"export" his opinion to the audience from the very beginning. And by linguistic means, heevokes the emotion of the audience and thus makes them accept his opinion.
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1.2 Purpose and Significance of the Study
The objective of this thesis is to make an in-depth analysis of the realization ofinterpersonal function in English Political Speeches. Halliday (1994) gives an explicitstatement that the objective of establishing Functional Grammar has been to construct agrammar for purposes of text analysis: one that would make it possible to say sensible anduseful things about either spoken or written text in modem English. In the light ofHalliday's Systemic-Functional Grammar, the thesis sets out tentatively to investigate therealization of interpersonal function in English political speeches.The significance of the present study mainly lies in the following aspects; to raiseEnglish language learners' awareness of choice of suitable mood and modality systems inachieving their communicative purpose; to strengthen their ability to understand andappreciate spoken discourses and become effective and successful English communicators;as for political speakers, an overall study of English political speeches from theinterpersonal perspective may improve their writing and speaking ability and make greatcontributions to the success of achieving their political goals.
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Chapter Two Review of Previous Research on Political Publicspeech

2.1 Rhetorical approaches to political public speeches
Rhetoric has been the subject of study for at least 2500 years. As Chilton andSchaffner (1997: 206) noted, the study of rhetoric，the art of verbal persuasion, was thoughtof by the Greeks and Roman本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。