A Systemic Functional Linguistics Approach to a Feminism Speech — Analysis of Anne Hathaway’s Speech at the UN Official Commemoration of International Women’s Day_英语论文

摘要

发表演讲是人类通过语言和一群听众进行有声交流，去表达说话者对某个话题的观点。女权主义演讲是公众演讲的一种，目的是定义，建立，达到政治上，经济上，人格上和社会上的性别平等。这包含了说话者希望消除性别偏见和为女性寻找建立和男性一样平等的教育和工作的机会。本文根据Halliday的系统功能语言学理论，对安妮海瑟薇的女性演讲进行语篇分析，目的是揭示该演讲的语域特点，同时阐明意义怎么通过形式被体现。

关键词：系统功能语言学  功能语篇分析  纯理功能  语域   

Abstract

Performing a speech is human vocal communication using language to illustrate speaker’s opinion upon a certain topic to a group of listeners. Feminism speech is a kind of public speech with the goal to define, establish, and achieve political, economic, personal, and social gender equality. This includes the speaker’s faith of eliminating gender stereotypes and seeking to create educational and professional opportunities for women that are equal to those for men. Based on the Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics, this thesis particularly conducts a discourse analysis of the Hathaway’s feminism speech, which aims at uncovering the speech’s characteristics in terms of register and revealing the realizational relationship between form and meaning.

Key words: Systemic Functional Linguistics  functional discourse analysis  meta-function  register 

Contents

Chapter One  Introduction 1

1.1  Purpose of This Thesis 1

1.2  Significance of This Thesis 1

1.3  Structure of This Thesis 2

1.4  Research Method of This Thesis 3

Chapter Two  Literature Review 4

2.1  Introduction 4

2.2  Discourse and Discourse Analysis 4

2.2.1 Definition of Discourse 5

2.2.2 Definition of Discourse Analysis 5

2.3  Public Speech 6

2.4  Other theories in Speech Discourse Analysis 7

2.5  Systemic Functional Grammar in Speech Discourse Analysis 8

2.6  Comment 8

Chapter Three  Theoretical Framework 10

3.1  Introduction 10

3.2  Three Meta-functions 10

3.2.1 Ideational Meta-function 11

3.2.2 Interpersonal Meta-function 11

3.2.3 Textual Meta-function 11

3.3  The Relation between Three Meta-functions and Register 11

Chapter Four Discourse Analysis of Hathaway’ s Feminism Speech 12

4.1  Introduction 13

4.2  Brief Introduction to Hathaway’s Speech at the UN 13

4.3  Discourse Analysis 14

4.3.1 Register 14

4.3.2 Brief Introduction to Mood System 15

4.3.3 Quantitative Analysis from the Perspective of Mood System 16

4.3.4 Qualitative Analysis from the perspective of Mood System 17

4.3.5 Brief Introduction to Modality System 20

4.3.6 Quantitative Analysis from the Perspective of Modality System 23

4.3.7 Brief Introduction to Personal Nouns 25

4.3.8 Quantitative Analysis from the Perspective of Personal Nouns 25

4.3.9 Brief Introduction to Cohesion System 27

4.3.10 Qualitative Analysis from the Perspective of Cohesion System 27

Chapter Five  Conclusion 29

5.1  Major Findings 29

5.2  Limitations of the Study 30

Bibliography

Appendices

Acknowledgements