功能语篇分析研讨会.docVIP

功能语篇分析研讨会 发言摘要 Analyzing Richard Nixon’s Discourse in Victory and Downfall WEBSTER, Jonathan (卫真道) In this paper I apply a functional approach to the analysis of US President Nixon’s second inaugural and resignation speeches.? ?My aim is to investigate how patterning in both lexis and grammar projects not only a perspective on text as edifice whose rhetorical structure is based on coherent relations between functionally significant spans of text, but also another perspective on text as tapestry whose texture depends on how cohesive are the threads of discourse.? The speeches mark two very different points in Nixon’s presidency, from the pinnacle of success to the depths of failure.?? Following a landslide win over his Democratic opponent, George McGovern, and coming just three days before his announcement of the Vietnam peace deal, Nixon’s second inaugural was delivered on January 20, 1973, at a point in his career when his popularity was at its highest.??? About a year and half later, on 8 August 1974, with 65 percent of Americans favoring his impeachment over Watergate-related charges, Nixon announced his resignation. ?Hal Bochin, in his book Richard Nixon?Rhetorical Strategist (1990),? reports that public reaction to the resignation speech was “generally favorable” (81), with commentators noting “a genuiness” (82) in Nixon’s remarks, even though Nixon refused to accept moral blame and spent fewer than twenty-four seconds on expressing regret.? Cloran, Stuart-Smith and Young (2007) outline various functional approaches to the study of discourse, including Hasan’s (1984) Cohesive Harmony Analysis (CHA); Cloran’s (1994) Rhetorical Unit Analysis (RUA); Mann and Thompson’s (1988) Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST); and Gregory’s (1985) Phasal Analysis (PA). Common among functional approaches is the idea that a text is composed of functionally- significant text spans.?? A functionally-significant text span is a lexico-grammatically cohesive unit.???? It is cha