A Comparative Study on Obama's Speeches from the Perspective of Interpersonal Function

摘要

This paper attempts to conduct a comparative study on Obama’s two speeches—his second inaugural address and his commencement speech in The Ohio State University in 2013 based on Halliday’s theory of Interpersonal Function.The author finds that mood,modality and personal pronouns are the major language means used to realize the interpersonal function;in his two speeches,Obama makes different choices of those resources,and different choices indicate different attitudes and intentions.