DOI: 10.5176/2251-3566_L318.368
Authors: Mengyan Zhao and Yi Zhang
Abstract: Based on transitivity theory in Halliday's Systemic-Functional Grammar, this paper aims to conduct a comparative study of American presidents Donald Trump’s and Barack Obama’s inaugural addresses through a transitivity analysis. A combination of quantitative and qualitative method is applied to explore the similarities and differences between these two inaugural addresses in transitivity features in terms of distribution and functions and to offer explanations for these similarities and differences. The general distribution of transitivity processes in the two addresses is similar. Material processes (69.7%/61.7%) highly dominate the speeches, followed by relational processes (19.1%/27.7%) and mental processes (4.9%/7.4%), while the other three processes have a very low occurrence. However, different processes are employed to fulfill different functions. Obama uses material processes to describe the economic crisis and trace the ancestors of America. Trump employs quotations as verbal process to strengthen his authoritative status and uses behavioral processes to show his concern for American citizens. The main conclusion drawn from this study is that similar intentions of the speeches and different situations and personal background of the two presidents are attributed to choices of processes in the two speeches. It is expected that this study can provide insights into political language and ideology behind language use through encoding the transitivity features of political discourses.
Keywords: transitivity analysis, process types, inaugural address
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