Abstract

The paper conducts a stylistic analysis of Obama’s speech Yes, We Can, which is a very important speech in Mr. Obama’s life. In order to help readers understand the speech more easily, the writer attempts to use some stylistic theories by focusing on the phonemic and syntactic patterning to analyze the speech. From the perspective of sound patterning, the writer finds out that alliteration and rhyme are quite frequently in Yes, We Can. And at synatactic level, the repetition and parallelism are used extensively.

Key Words:  Stylistics  analysis  speech

摘 要

本文对奥巴马的演讲《是的，我们能》进行了文体分析。此演讲是奥巴马的一个非常重要的演讲。为了帮助读者更加深动地理解这篇演讲，作者尝试运用文体学理论对其分析，主要采用了语音分析和句法分析。作者发现在语音方面该演讲多使用压头韵及压韵手法，在句法层面多使用重复以及并列句。

关键词：文体学 分析 演讲

1    Introduction
The 2008 U.S.A Presidential Election is said to be the fiercest between presidential candidates. Firstly, Obama gained democratic presidential nominee by defeating Hillary Clinton, and then he reached presidency by defeating his opponent John McCain. This analysis centers on the selected speech Yes, We Can, in which Mr. Obama gave his acceptance speech in North Carolina. The writer attempts to use stylistic theories to analyze the speech from the perspective of sound patterning and syntactic level. 
Firstly, it is very important to understand the meaning of stylistics. According to Leech(1974), “stylistic meaning is often talked about by those who major in linguistics or literature. Stylistic meaning is that a piece of language conveys about the social circumstances of its use”
Then the paper will analyze the speech by focusing on the phonemic and syntactic patterning. Wang Shouyuan(2000) analyzed phonemic patterning with alliteration, rhyme, assonance, consonance and onomatopoeia. While in this paper, the writer chooses alliteration and rhyme to do analysis, for the reason that these two are very common in specches, poetries and so on. As for the syntactic patterning, Wang Shouyuan(2000) just chose repetition and parallelism to analyze. In the paper, the writer also uses repetition and parallelism to help figure out the importance of the speech Yes, We Can. We will see the detailed analysis in the following parts.