An Interpersonal Function Analysis of Donald J.Trump’s Tweets_英语论文

摘要

现今，社交网络服务已经成为人们获取信息的主要渠道。在众多提供社交网络服务的平台中，推特广受欢迎。众所周知，唐纳德·特朗普对推特几近上瘾，每日约发十条推文来传播其政治理念和个人观点。

语言不仅能够帮助人们传递信息，还能表达说话者的身份，态度和动机。本文基于语气系统中的三种语气类型和情态系统中的三个情态量值，以特朗普在个人推特上发布的78条有影响力推文为研究语料，对特朗普推文中人际意义的表达进行分析。

经分析发现，在语气系统中，特朗普主要采用陈述语气以提供信息。这能让人们在浏览其推文时对其所提倡的政策和其本人有更好的了解。在情态系统中，特朗普主要用了中情态量值的情态动词，特别是 “will”。这说明特朗普希望借此表明他与读者处于平等的地位，以助其构建一个亲民的总统形象。简而言之，特朗普在推文中主要采用了语气和情态这两个理论来达到其特殊的交际目的：获取更多支持，建立和谐的外交关系和维护总统权威。

关键词：推文  交际功能  语气  情态

Abstract

Nowadays, social networking services have become people’s main access to information. Among them, “Twitter” is rated as one of the most popular. Donald Trump is known to be addicted to tweeting, posting almost 10 tweets a day to disseminate his personal and political views. 

Language can not only convey information, but also indicate the speaker’s status, attitudes and feelings. In this thesis, the author investigates the interpersonal meanings conveyed through Trump’s tweets in light of three mood types in Mood system and three values of modality in modality system. Altogether 78 influential tweets of Trump’s are selected as the research data of this study. 

Through an analysis of these data, it has been found that, in Mood system, declarative mood is most frequently adopted, so it can be inferred that Trump mainly tweets to offer information. In this way, people could have a better understanding of some political policies and Trump himself through reading his tweets, which helps Trump to gain more trust and support. As to values of modality, the median value modal verbs, especially “will”, are used most frequently, which indicates that Trump would like to show that he and readers are of equal social status, which contributes to the building of his amiable image. In brief, Mood and modality are two effective linguistic methods adopted by Trump in his tweets for realizing his special interactive purpose of gaining more support, establishing harmonious diplomatic relationship and enhancing his authority as a president.   

Key words: tweet  communication function   mood   modality

Contents

Chapter One  Introduction 1

1.1  Research Background 1

1.2  The Purpose and Significance of This Thesis 2

1.3  The Structure of This Thesis 3

Chapter Two  Literature Review 5

2.1  A Brief Introduction to Donald Trump 5

2.2  Previous Studies on Twitter 6

2.3  Previous Studies on Donald Trump’s Discourse.7

2.4  Summary 9

Chapter Three  Theoretical Framework 10

3.1  General Introduction 10

3.2  Mood System 11

3.2.1 Speech Role 11

3.2.2 Structure of Mood 12 

3.3  Modality 13

3.3.1 Types of Modality 13 

3.3.2 Values of Modality 14 

Chapter Four  An Analysis of Interpersonal Function in Donald                  

Trump’s Tweets 16

4.1  An Analysis of Trump’s Tweets in terms of Mood Types 16

4.1.1 Interpersonal Function of Declaratives 17 

4.1.2 Interpersonal Function of Imperatives 22 

4.1.3 Interpersonal Function of Interrogatives 25  

4.2  An Analysis of Trump’s Tweets in terms of Values of Modality 27

4.2.1 Median Value 29

4.2.2 High Value 30

4.2.3 Low Value.31

4.3  Summary.32 

Chapter Five  Conclusion 34

Bibliography

Appendices

Acknowledgements