The Modality System and the Emotional Appeals: An Interpersonal Interpretation of Roosevelt’s Speeches

Abstract

This article takes Franklin D. Roosevelt’s four inaugural speeches as objects of study, and mainly uses the modality system in Halliday’s systemic functional grammar as theoretical framework. This paper, from a functional-stylistic perspective, tries to investigate the close relationship between the modality system and the interpersonal function, i.e. its emotional appeals to the audience, underlying those typical linguistic markers, hence to uncover Roosevelt’s unmatched linguistic competence and speaking techniques. Our study shows that Roosevelt prefers modalization to modulation. As for modulation, obligation covers 18.70% signaling the speaker’s degree of pressure on the audience to take positive action, and inclination appears frequently, covering 13.01%, and is mainly realized by finite modal operators or adjectives, showing Roosevelt’s willingness to do something for his country and people. Through these sparkling speeches, his wisdom and intelligence, capability and responsibility, prestige and power are fully demonstrated.