特雷莎•梅辞职演讲的及物性分析

Transitivity Analysis of Theresa May’s Resignation Speech

辞职演讲,作为政治演讲的一种,同样服务于演讲者特定的政治目的,但以往对于辞职演讲的关注相对较少。因此,本文选取了前任英国首相特雷莎•梅的辞职演讲作为研究语料,通过及物性分析来揭示演讲者如何通过语言的选择来影响民众的意识形态,实现自己的政治目的。研究发现:特雷莎•梅在辞职演讲中主要通过运用物质过程和关系过程客观展现了保守党政府的政绩,并宣传了保守党所坚持的英国“统一”和“自由”等意识形态,由此塑造了一个得体爱国且能干的党派形象并提高了民众对于保守党的认同,这为保守党未来赢得英国大选增加了优势;此外,梅还使用了一些心理、言语以及存在过程来煽动民众的情绪,改变民众对于脱欧一事的看法,从而推动日后脱欧进程顺利进行。

As a kind of political speech, resignation speech aims to achieve the speaker’s political purposes as other political speeches do. However, previous studies have not paid much attention to resignation speech. Therefore, this study chooses former British Prime Minister Theresa May’s resignation speech as research material and uses transitivity analysis to reveal how May affects the public’s ideology and achieves her political purposes through different language choices. Results show that May mainly uses material and relationship processes to objectively present the achievements of the Conservative government and publicizes the ideology of “unity” and “freedom” which the Conservative Party emphasizes, through which May manages to shape a decent, moderate and patriotic image for the Conservative Party and improve public recognition of the Party. Besides, May uses some mental, verbal and existential processes to change the public’s views on Brexit so as to promote the process of Brexit in the future.