Abstract

The speeches delivered by leaders on campus always draw immense attention because of the specialty of the audience. This thesis has comparatively analyzed the discourse structure and linguistic feature of three speeches delivered by Chinese and American leaders at the perspective of cross-culture. It mainly studies the differences by applying systemic functional grammar theory by Halliday. Furthermore, it also analyzed the reason of the differences at the aspects of two traditional cultures, ways of thinking and ideology.
Through these analysis and researches, the author found the following differences: at the lexical level, Chinese leaders always use abstract and positive words and make the content more formal while American leaders use relatively causal words. And as to the aspect of syntax, Chinese leaders always use optative sentence and complicated sentence structure. Besides, they tend to use rhetoric methods such as metaphor and quotation, which are not commonly used in an American leader's speech. The article makes some comments on the main opinion in the last chapter and offers some proposals about the future researches.

Keywords: Chinese and American leaders’ speech on campus; comparative; discourse; systemic function grammar

摘要

领导人在大学校园所发表的演讲因其观众的特殊性而一直备受关注，本文从语言因素和非语言因素综合分析中美两国领导人三篇校园演讲的语篇结构和语言特征,并进行对比,主要运用韩礼德的系统功能语法理论为基础挖掘其中存在的差异, 并从中美传统文化，中西思维方式和意识形态三方分析导致差异的原因。
通过分析和研究发现,中美两国领导人的校园演讲主要存在以下差异:从词汇特征看,中国领导人大量使用抽象名词和积极词汇;在内容和正式度上,中国领导人内容多为积极，更为正式，美国领导人则相对随意。在句法层面上,中国领导人祈愿句出现频率较高,美国领导人祈使句使用则更多,但是相比美国领导人的演讲,中国领导人所用句式变化更复杂,中国领导人使用的修辞手段也更多,比喻对比引用典故等在美国领导人的演讲中出现较少。论文在最后一章对主要观点进行总结,并对将来的进一步研究提出建议。

关键词：中美领导人校园演讲；对比分析；话语；系统功能语法