An Investigation Into Linguistic Expressions Of Interpersonal Meaning In English Political Speeches By British Foreign Secretaries

Abstract

This study investigates linguistic expressions of interpersonal meaning in English political speeches by British Foreign Secretaries. The study focuses on analyzing the expressions of mood element, modality and pronoun system from twenty English political speeches of the five newest British Foreign Secretaries on three specific aspects, which are nuclear weapons, climate change and Iraq War to explore how interpersonal meaning is achieved. On the basic of corpus collected from English political speeches by British Foreign Secretaries, the mood element, modality and pronoun system are described and analyzed in order to help readers have more understandings on the interpersonal meaning in English political speeches. The findings show that British Foreign Secretaries make full use of the language to achieve their political purposes in the speeches by using different devices to fulfill interpersonal meaning. From the findings, some implications are put forward for the teaching and learning English for Vietnamese learners.