The Representative Function of Obama’s Inaugural Address

【Abstract】The United States presidential inauguration address is a kind of political speech. This paper applies one of the three Metafunctions to the realization of Obamas Inaugural Address through five processes in the system.

【Key words】Obamas Inaugural； Address； representative； function； transitivity

【作者簡介】徐圆，吉林职工医科大学。

1. Introduction

United States presidential inaugural address has a widespread influence. In 2008， the first black candidate Barack Obama was elected the United Sates President. This article takes this inaugural address by Obama as the corpus， uses Hallidays register theory to have a research on the features of three Metafunctions.

2. Theoretical Study

Systemic functional grammar （ SFG） is a grammar mode developed by Micheal Halliday. It is the most well- known component of a broad social semiotic approach to language called systematic- functional linguistics， originally articulated by Halliday in the 1960s. According to Halliday， representative function refers to the language that people in the real world. According to Halliday， representative function refers to the language that people in the real world experiences represented in function （Zhu Yongsheng， Yan shiqing， 2001：24）.

3. Application of Representative Function----Transitivity

3.1. Research Analysis

According to the content of the speech， this paper analyzes two parts： economic crisis， foreign policy. So the specific analysis of the five processes will be discussed in the following parts.

Firstly， the writer analyzes the economic crisis. From this part， material process has the maximum number， and the relational process. Mental process and verbal process both emerged but are little ones. There are not behavioral process and existential process in the discourse. There are 7 in the opening part， “stand， thank， taken， taken spoken， canrried， remind”. The other three which show the objective fact by some specific actions only emerge in the occasion which describe the economic crisis， “weakened， lost， met”. Relational process mostly appeared when he talked about economic crisis， and conclusively show that the existence of economic crisis and its critical situation. Even though there is only one verbal process， it is the process that Obama conveys the information to the public， which reiterated that the crisis is real and cannot be ignored.

Secondly， the writer analyzes the foreign policy. From this part， material process remains the most， but the second process has changed. It is no longer the relational process but the mental one. It is easy to understand that Obamas statement during the reign of his foreign policy belongs to a formal and serious issue. So it is indispensable to appear the material processes. As for the foreign policy， Obama showed the different positions and attitudes for different countries， so there are a lot of mental processes， meeting the requirements of topics. In addition， Obama needed to exchange some information through words to express the different positions and attitudes in foreign policy， so verbal process appears here. It is worth mentioning that the all the actors of the material process in this section are “we”. It also means that Mr Obamas foreign policy prefers to reflect the objective reality of the world and also close to people， which is kind and receptive.

3.2. Analysis Results

We can see that the processes selected orientation in the Obama inaugural discourse are： 1） material process and relational process are in the ascendant， and the mental process orientation， and verbal process are weakening. 2） the material processes are widely spread in the second part and third part about the restoring confidence and pioneers retrospection. As for the foreign policy， Obama used more mental processes， thereby demonstrating the different positions and attitudes of the Government for different countries. Through this kind of mental process application， the United States citizens can better understand and trust the new President.

4. Conclusion

From the above analysis data， the material processes and the relational processes in Obamas inaugural speech occurs more frequently in the process， which represents the objective and true nature. So we can see that this Obamas Inaugural Address can be regarded as a typical linguistic material.

References：

[1]Halliday M A K. An Introduction to Functional Grammar[M].Bei Jing： Foreign Language Teach ing and Research Press，2000.

[2]胡壯麟，朱永生，张德禄.系统功能语法概论[M].长沙：湖南教育出版社，1989.