Abstract
The systematic functional grammar proposed by Halliday has profound influence on the linguistic theory research in the second half of the 20th century. Halliday believes language has three meta-functions: ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function. The ideational function is to convey new information, to communicate a content that is unknown to the hearer. The ideational function mainly consists of transitivity and voice. Transitivity is simply the grammar of the clause in its ideational aspect. It consists of six different processes: Material process, Behavioral process, Mental process, Verbal process, Relational process and Existential process. Political speech is an important form of public speech and it plays an extremely important role in political life. Based on Halliday’s ideational functional theory, the thesis selects Trump’s winning speech and analyzes it from the perspective of transitivity system. The main purpose of the article is to analyze Trump’s language skills, and at the same time, provide a research idea and method for readers to interpret political speech discourse. This article revolves around the following two questions: 1. How are the six processes distributed in Trump’s winning speech? 2. What are the functions of the six processes in Trump’s speech? Based on these two questions, this paper conducts statistics on speech through quantitative and qualitative analysis. Through analysis, the author finds that there are three processes used frequently. They are relational process (35%), material process (30%), mental process (24%) in turn. While the verbal process (8%), the behavioral process (2%), and the existential process (1%) are very low frequency. This is because of Trump’s speech intention. As a new president, he needs to express his own ideas, clarify his position and policies affecting people’s emotions, call for public support, and clarify his vision and plan for the future of the United States.
Highlights
Halliday is the leader of the systemic functional grammar, which has great inspiration for linguists
Halliday believes that experimental function is realized by transitive system, which is composed of material processes, mental processes, relational processes, behavioral processes, verbal processes, and existential processes [1]
The author analyzes Trump’s winning speech from the perspective of transitivity, in order to understand the purpose of transitivity and the political intentions behind the speech
Summary
Halliday is the leader of the systemic functional grammar, which has great inspiration for linguists. He believes that language mainly has three meta-functions: ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function. Most of the domestic studies about political speech are studied from the perspective of interpersonal function and textual function, there is almost no research from the perspective of ideational function. The author analyzes Trump’s winning speech from the perspective of transitivity, in order to understand the purpose of transitivity and the political intentions behind the speech. It is necessary to study Trump’s winning speech from the perspective of transitivity. Li Jing and Li Fengjie: A Case Study of Transitivity Analysis of Trump’s Winning Speech Based on Systematic. In this part, the author makes a summary and gives major findings and the paper’s limitations
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