A Discourse Analysis of Interpersonal Metafunction in Donald Trump's Speech Recognizing Jerusalem as Capital of Israel

摘要

This study examines the discourse strategies used by Donald Trump in his speech recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital. In implementing the analysis, the study employs Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) theoretical framework, specifically interpersonal metafunction elements, to analyze all uses of language in expressing social and personal relations in the speech. Interpersonal metafunction is commonly realized by mood and modality analysis. In Mood analysis, it can be revealed the role of the speaker wanted to be in the speech situation, and also the role the speaker wanted to assign to the hearer. Furthermore, in Modality analysis, it can be revealed not only how the speaker views and thinks to the problem of the speech topic, but also the power relationship and the formality scale between the speaker and the hearer. The results show that the design of Donald Trump's speech recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital reflects his political intention. It is all shown not only by its interpersonal metafunction discourse strategies he uses but also by its interpersonal meaning he creates in his speech. This is quite understandable since Trump tries to persuade the world that what he did in recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital in his speech is a correct decision, and it does not threaten world peace.