Stylistic Analysis of President Trump’s Inaugural Speech

◆Abstract：This paper is intended to conduct a systematic analysis of President Trumps inaugural speech from the phonological level and graphological level respectively by employing Linguistic Description.The major finding of the unique style of President Trumps inaugural speech are summed as follows： the use of alliteration，rhyme，antithesis，repetition and parallelism to make the speech more rhythmical and persuasive，and the use of dashes，simple words and dynamic words to make the speech easier to be understood.The study will be helpful for readers to understand the influence of President Trumps language style on his inaugural speech and appreciate the linguistic features of President Trumps inaugural speech.

◆Keywords：President Trump；Inaugural Speech；Stylistic Analysis；Linguistic Description

CHAPTERⅠ Linguistic Description

Leech and Short （1981） list four linguistic and stylistic categories when they expound the methods of stylistic analysis of fiction： lexical categories，grammatical categories，figure of speech，cohesion and context.（Dong Qiming 2009） This paper employs the method of stylistic research of professor Dong Qiming，and makes a stylistic analysis of President Trumps inaugural speech at the level of phonology and graphology.

CHAPTERⅡ Linguistic Analysis of President Trumps Inaugural Speech

1 Phonological Features of President Trumps Inaugural Speech

1.1 Alliteration

Alliteration is a notable feature.There are many repetitions of consonant sounds，especially at the beginning of the words，such as first and foremost，might and main，saints and sinners.The alliteration refers to the similar or same pronunciation at the beginning of two or more than two words.As we all know，alliteration has the beauty of rhyme and usually used in poems.It can make the sentences have regular rhythm and it is easy to express the emotion of the author wants to.There is an alliteration appearing in the first paragraph of speech，REBUILD and RESTORE，in the following example.

1.2 Rhyme

The rhyme refers to the similar or same pronunciation at the end of two or more than two words.The function of rhyme is similar to alliterations.They all make the sentences have regular rhythm and it is easy to express the emotion of the author wants to.There are many rhymes in the speech such as WEALTH，STRENGTH，and CONFIDENCE in the sentence of paragraph 18.

2 Graphological Features of President Trumps Inaugural Speech

2.1 Punctuation

In English，there are many punctuations and they have different functions.For example，the question marks are used in the general questions，special questions，tag questions and so on.The exclamation marks usually are used at the beginning of sentences with what or how to express plaint，surprise，amazing，happy and so on.For the speech，the most notable punctuation is dash.There are a lot of dashes in the speech.As we all know，dash has many functions in the speech such as，demonstrating or illustrating，expressing the duration of speech，emphasizing，marking the author，leading to the following，expressing the progressives of meaning and expressing the not finished words.In this following sentence of paragraph 12.

2.2 Paragraphing

As we all know，paragraphing is very important for authors to divide or manage the structure and content of the text.In the Chinese texts or passages usually have three types of paragraphing，such as conclusion-detail-conclusion，conclusion-detail and detail-conclusion.However，in English passages，there are only two types of paragraphing，they are conclusion-detail-conclusion and detail-conclusion.It is easy to find that the last paragraph always is the conclusion in English passage.The paragraphing means to divide the content into many paragraphs，and different paragraphs usually have different cores.The first paragraph usually is the leading paragraph and the last paragraph usually is the paragraph of summary.

CHAPTERⅢ

This paper makes a comprehensive and all-scale analysis，achieving the goal of helping readers to understand the linguistic style of President Trumps inaugural speech and understand the influence of president Trumps unique linguistic style on his inaugural speech.

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作者简介

吕宽（1995.06—），男，陕西省，南宁师范大学外国语学院，硕士研究生在读，英语语言学研究方向。