A Metafunctional Analysis ofMartin Luther King’s I Have a DreamChapter I IntroductionThis thesis makes a detailed analysis of the great speech I Have a Dream, delivered by Martin Luther King Jr., from systemic functional perspective. it aims to investigate how the author successfully develops it, strengthens the theme and reaches the ideal effects.Such a powerful English political public speech has long been repeatedly studied and excerpted ever since it was first delivered in Washington. Many scholars have also analyzed either the oral or the written speech text from different aspects. However, few of them have ever tried to apply Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) to analyze it. As SFG will become the backbone theoretic support in this paper, it is important to start with the following brief introduction of the history of systemic functional grammar.For their own research purposes, linguists present different methods for analyzing discourses. Here are some examples: Schiffrin in Approaches to Discourse introduces 6 methods for discourse analysis: speech act theory, international sociolinguistics, the ethnography of communication, pragmatics, conventional analysis, variation analysis, socio-cultural analysis, critical analysis and comprehensive analysis. They can be roughly categorized as Structuralism and Functionalism according to their theoretic bases. At the turn of the twentieth century, historical and general linguistics were well established as academic disciplines.With the development of linguistics, some linguists begin to do some research on language from functional prospective. These linguists stress the social attribute of language, emphasize the information transmitting function of lingual forms and interpret lingual phenomena with reference to their contexts. SFG is the representative theory of Functionalism. SFG, mainly developed by M.A.K. Halliday in the 1960s, is “a theory of meaning as choice, by which a language, or any other semiotic system, isinterpreted as networks of interlocking options.”And SFG is more suitable for discourse analysis than other theories because it is a theory of high manipulation and practicability. Some successful studies of separate discourses with this theory have been done.Martin Luther King Jr. became a famous leader of Civil Rights Movements in America in the 1960s, and he was also a powerful speaker. He delivered this greatest speech on the hot afternoon of August 28, 1963. Almost 250,000 people marched on Washington to witness this historic moment of the United States. His speech was the symbol of the demonstration for the civil rights as Washington that was also the turning point and the milestone of the Civil Rights Movement.Now it still has immeasurable influence on American civil right legislation, black people‟s struggle for freedom and democracy and the global struggle of anti-racial segregation and discrimination. It is also one of the well-known speeches in the world which has been translated into many languages, read and studied as a speech model by people for the purpose of appreciating its artistry of literature and improving their writing or speaking competence. Although many studies have offered many insights into the speech, it is still worthy of studying the speech from the prospective because that may offer us new insights into it.This thesis attempts to extend its analysis to different aspects of lexico-grammatical layer of the speech in order to practice and testify that SFG is of notable power of application and manipulation; so it can be effective method of analyzing discourses. It also provides its readers a better understanding and fuller appreciation of the speech.Chapter II Relevant Theories2.1 The Definition of Discourse/ Text in SFGThis thesis is mainly about discourse analysis with SFG; so it is of great value to elaborate the definition of discourse/ text in SFG. The present author will treat the two terms as the same with both referring to any language in use, including written ones and spoken ones.Structural linguistics considers text as a grammatical unit that is larger than a sentence but is related to a sentence in the same way that a sentence is related to a clause. While Halliday believes it is misleading for he holds the view that a text is some kind of super-sentence, “something that is larger than sentence but of the same nature” (Halliday, 2001:135). In terms of the size of text, functional grammar claims that text is “not defined by its size”and it is used in linguistics to refer to “any passage, spoken or written, of whatever length, that does form a unified whole”(Halliday & Hasan, 2001:1).While Halliday and Hasan make the interpretation of a text into a broader sense. From functional prospective, “a text is a unit of language in use”, which breaks the limit of the structural interpretation of text being grammatically larger than sentence that treats text and sentence as the same nature.2.2 Discourse AnalysisThe term Discourse Analysis originated from Z. Harris‟ paper Discourse Analysis published in 1952 which is considered as the beginning of modern discourse analysis. But some linguists define discourse analysis the linguistic analysis of spontaneous and coherent spoken or written discourse. And others think it as research or how sentences are used in communications to perform social behaviors, emphasizing the communicational functions of discourses.So a discourse provides many characteristics for analyzing from different perspectives. And these characteristics can not be dealt within a single analysis, so any single analysis cannot cover all of them or cannot be elaborate. What is to be analyzed should be decided by the register of the discourse and the purpose of analysis.2.3 Three MetafunctionsAll the more specific functions can be assigned to one or more functions, and hence we refer to these broad functions as metafunctions. The first is the experiential; the second is the interpersonal; and the third is the textual.Ideational function comprises a set of resources for constructing people‟s theories of experience, and the ways in which people construct reality that seem natural tothem. It is used to understand the environment.Interpersonal function has something to do to with a speaker/writer‟s resources for interacting in dialogue and for expressing hid/ her opinions and attitudes. It is used to “act on the others in it”.The third function is the textural function, having to do with the problem of organizing what a speaker/writer has to say with respect to what they‟ve said and what they‟re going to say, and making what they‟ve said relevant to the context in which they are speaking. So it is a kind of management function which is supposed that a speaker/writer encode into interpersonal and ideational meaning.Chapter III Metafunctional Analysis of I Have a Dream3.1 The Experiential Function3.1.1 TransitivityAs we know that the life of human being is full of varied and colorful experiences, which are composed of the content of “goings-on”—happening, doing, sensing, meaning, and being and becoming. Human beings use language to build a mental picture of reality, to make sense of these experiences and sort out these “goings-on” in the grammar clause. The grammatical system by which achieved is transitivity. The transitivity system construes the world of experience into a set of process types in which the processes consist, in principle, of three components: (i) the process itself; (ii) participants in the process; (iii) circumstances associated with the process, which change their specific terms with the different types of process.In the transitivity system, there are three main kinds of processes: material, mental and relational processes. The processes of doing are those of material processes; and the processes of consciousness are those of mental processes; the processes of classifying and identifying are those of relational processes. (Halliday, 2000: 106-7).3.1.2 Transitivity Analysis of I Have a DreamEvery complete discourse shall have consisted of more than one functional component realized through different processes which combine together to express a speaker/ writer‟s thought for different purposes. The combination of different processes in an English political discourse such as the above-mentioned speech servesvarious functions: to state the truth, to express feelings, to describe happenings, to explain power relationships, to call for actions, and so on.The transitivity analysis of I Have a Dream is as follows:This speech is given on the day in memory of the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation at the step before Abraham Lincoln‟s memorial. Through this speech, he wants to make the following points clear:1.American blacks‟ equal civil rights, liberty and freedom are legitimate, so their struggle for these civil rights is legitimate.2. At current, American black people can not enjoy their legitimate civil rights as American whites do because of racial injustice, discrimination and segregation.3. Peaceful struggle is the right way for American blacks to obtain heir legitimate civil rights and they should keep on struggling until their goal is realized.We know that many processes have two participants. And this speech involves passive voice, subjunctive mood and various tenses. All these prove that King illustrates his points from different angles to make his arguments touching and convincing.Look at the extract from I Have a Dream:(1)In a sense we have come [Material] to our nation‟s capital to cash [Material] acheck. When the architects of our republic wrote [Material] the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing [Material] a promissory note to which every American was to fall [Relational] heir.This note was [Relational] a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed[Material] the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness.In (1), 5 out of 7 processes are material processes, others are relational processes. These five material processes here state firmly the truth about American blacks‟ civil rights that they are bestowed to American blacks as to the rest of American people since the foundation of the Untied States of America.Relational processes describe the relationship of people and things in a discourse. In English political speeches, the relational processes are often used in explainingsome abstract political concepts, elaborating the relationship between political powers or between other entities. In this speech, the relationship processes take up one quarter of all the processes and many serve to state the imbalance of power relationship, or civil rights, between American whites and American blacks and their hope to change the current imbalance of power between them and their faith in their final victory.3.1.3 Lexical Density of I Have a DreamLexical density is closely related to nominalization through which processes and properties are reworded metaphorically as nouns; they function as thing in the nominal group.The style of public political speeches is more formal than that of daily spoken discourses, which makes a public political speech contain characteristics of both spoken discourse and written discourse.As a public political speech made at such a solemn moment, this speech needs characteristics of written discourses to maintain its seriousness. Its characteristics of written discourse are displayed more in the adoption of many figurations such as “a great beacon lights”, “a bad check”and “tranquillizing drug of gradualism”, its repetition of phrases and words, its clausal parallel structures which all add sublimity to its tone, momentum and vividness to the speech as a whole.3.2 Interpersonal FunctionIt is the way in which the communication between speaker/writer and audience/reader is established.3.2.1 The Mood SystemThe mood system of mood and modality is the main ways put forward by Halliday to realize the interpersonal function of a discourse. “Mood expresses the speech function”(Halliday, 2000:363). “Modality refers to the areas of meaning that lies between yes and no—the intermediate ground between positive and negative polarity”.3.2.1.1 Analysis of the Mood System of I Have a DreamInterpersonal function of a discourse is mainly realized through the choice of the mood of it. Halliday points out: “the general principle behind the expression of moodin the clause is as follows. The grammatical category that is characteristically used to exchange information is the indicative; the characteristic expression of a statement is the declarative that of a question is the interrogative.” King uses two modal operators as in (13) and (14).(13) …to which every American was to [obligation] fall heir.(14)…that all men, yes, black men and white men, would [obligation] be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.It first presents what American blacks deserve and what they actually have now. King describes the real and terrible situations at present in which American blacks are. All these are facts that have happened and cannot be changed.3.3 Textual FunctionAs we know mentioned that a text is a semantic unit, but to be exact, a text should also be a semantically coherent unit. A text of this kind has “texture” which integrates different and related parts of the text so that it expresses meaning as a whole. It is “texture” that ensures a text‟s coherence, and thus it is a meaningful text. The concept of texture is entirely appropriate to express the property of …being a text‟. A text has texture, which is what distinguishes it from something that is not a text. It derives this texture from the fact that it functions as a unity with respect to the enviro nment”(Halliday & Hasan, 2001:2). In a text, texture is the semantic relation of the information relationship expressed by the elements of the text.3.3.1 Non-structural CohesionIt can be further divided into componential and organic relations. Cohesion of componential relations refers to the semantic relation between information components, i.e. language elements in cohesive ties are not the holistic information, but the components of information. Cohesion of organic relations means the semantic relation of the holistic information, not that of the components of information.After the brief introduction to the non-structural cohesive devices, we shall analyse some typical ones in this speech.3.3.1.1 Grammatical Cohesive DevicesGrammatical cohesive devices can be divided into two groups: reference includingpronominals, demonstratives, definite articles and comparative, and substitution and ellipsis including nominal substitution/ellipsis, verbal substitution /ellipsis and clausal substitution/ ellipsis.In this speech, exdophoric reference is greatly employed. “We” appears 31 times; “us”, 4 times; “our”, 16 times. They are all together 51 times. These pronominals refer to participants of the communication, the speaker, King and his audience. Of the demonstrative “this” in that speech, there are 5 elements referring to the participants, the place, the time and the political conditions of the speech as in the discourse, “...(16)...this nation...(18)...this hallowed spot...(25) this sweltering summer (50)this situation…(54) this nation…”. “Here” refers to the place of the speech appears 3 times.The great number of “we (us, our)” used in the speech shorten the distance between King and other American blacks and that between American blacks and American whites and imply the fact that all Americans, black people and white people, are the citizens of the USA. “We” can include the speaker and the listener at the same time in English, so the use of “we” mean the speaker and the listener hole the position, so the listener will feel the intimacy between them and would like to support the speaker without any doubt. This would lead them to make the conclusion that they are equal, and thus American blacks deserve the civil rights as American whites do.The words “here”and “this”make the relationship between the speech and its context of situation closer, and also strengthen its audience‟s feeling of being on-the-spot and attract their attention more.3.3.1.2 Lexical Cohesive DevicesCo-reference, co-classification and co-extension are realized through different cohesive devices whose realization is language elements of a discourse. These language elements form different cohesive ties of three or more language elements which are also called, as Halliday puts it, cohesive chains, or referential chains. The reason is that language elements forming the chains can be “anything that can have a participant role in a transitivity structure…circumstantial elements, the process itself…” (Halliday,2000:337).Halliday and Hasan categorize lexical cohesion into 2 groups: reiteration and collocation. Reiteration means that a certain word reappears in a discourse through the repetition of itself, or the use of its synonym, superordinate, hyponymy, general word, and other forms to make the discourse‟s sentences cohesive. In terms of the repetition role in the coherence of a discourse, Hoey says: “…repetition serves to show the relatedness of sentences in much the same way that a bibliographical reference shows the relatedness of academic papers.” Collocation means lexical items‟ co-occurrence tendency. In a discourse centering on a certain subject, some words will appear at the same time and others will have little or no possibility to appear because of “field of discourse”. The semantic relations of collocation are antonym and complementary, etc.First, we will take paragraph 2 and paragraph 3 of the speech as an example to analyze the cohesive chain in I Have a Dream.The second and the third paragraphs focus on the fact that American blacks have not received their civil rights, on the contrary, they are still suffering from the segregation and the discrimination from the American racialists even 100 years after they were entitled to protection under the laws such as the Emancipation Proclamation. So the three cohesive chains are “five score years ago”, “we” and “Negro” which make these two paragraphs a semantically coherent local part of that speech.There are three cohesive chains running through I Have a Dream as follows:Chain one:(1)our...(2) we...(9) we...(11) our...(15)we...(16) we...(17) we...(18) we (22)our...(29) our...(31) our/we...(32) us/our...(33) we...(34) we/our (35)we (36)us/our/our/our….(37)we…(38)we/we/we…(39)we…(41)we…(42)we/our…(43 )we…(44) we/we…(51) we…(54) we…(62) our…Chain two:(1)nation...(8) American society...(10) nation...(11) republic...(13) America (14)America...(16) nation...(18) America...(22) nation...(24) nation (27)nation...(28) America...(29) nation...(54) nation...(57) nation...(65) nation (67)country…Chain three:(1)freedom...(3)injustice....(4) captivity...(5) free...(12) liberty...(15) justice (17)freedom/justice...(20)democracy...(21)justice...(22)injustice/brotherhood (23)justice…(25)freedom/equality…(29)justice…(32)freedom…(36)freedom/freedo m…(77)freedom/freedom/free/free…Chain one is a referential chain formed by the exophoric of “we/our/us” discussed in section 3.3.1.1. This chain, as stated above, integrates his speech and its context of situation, stresses the equality between King and his audience and creates the atmosphere of their liking and sympathizing with each other, thus strengthens their solidarity.Chain two is formed by words of repetition, synonym. We treat “American society” as the synonym of “nation”. Chain three is combined by words of repetition, synonym, and antonym. We treat “democracy”as the synonym of “freedom/ equality” and “sisters and brothers/ brotherhood”.Chain one, two and three all begin at the first sentence of I Have a Dream and end at the last sentence of it. From he beginning to the end, there are many lexical items of chain one, two and three which appear in the same sentence. Words like “we/our/us”, “nation/country/America”and “freedom/justice/equality”are the central tokens that refer to the cohesive items interacting with other cohesive chains. The interaction of cohesive chains usually indicates the topic of a discourse. So does in his speech.The interaction of chain one, two, and three shows that the aim of this speech is to call for all Americans, both American blacks and American whites, to fight for the realization of freedom and equality for all the American people. Another thing is the lexical items of chain two and chain three are all words expressing meanings of seriousness and grandness and thus they make this speech more formal and adequate for its context of situation.3.3.2 ParallelismParallelism refers to a linguistic structure appears in a discourse more than one time.These sentences or phrases with the same or similar structures are closely correlated in contents and meanings. They sound rhythmically and sonorously when read aloud, so they can express the speaker/writer‟s strong feelings and become cohesive device helping to make a discourse a coherent one. In this speech, from sentence 55 to 61, “I have a dream” appears nine times at the beginning of the sentences which coheres with “I still have a dream” in sentence 52 to 53. “it is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream”. Besides, it is also the same as the title of the speech. They together advance gradually the speaker‟s argument.We can find out that many other parallel structures in the speech I Have a Dream, such as, “Now is the time to…” in sentence 20, 21,22 and 23; “we can never be satisfied as long as…” in sentence 41, 42 and 43; “let freedom ring…”in the last paragraph. All the parallel structures consist of a great part of a dream, so parallelism is an important cohesive device in it.Chapter IV ConclusionSystemic functional linguistic approach in discourse analysis is undoubtedly valuable and important. It provides discourse analysis with a scientific and practical standard. The association of the three strata (the three variables of context, the three metafunctions and the lexico-grammatical layer) tremendously enhances the power of evaluation and persuasion of analysis and makes it more scientific.Discourse, or text, is the language that is functional in social context. It is a meaning unit that consists of ideational, interpersonal and textual components. In the theory of SFG, the three semantic components of discourse have a corresponding relationship upwards with the three parameters of context of situation: field, tenor and mode, and downwards with the lexico-grammatical structures: transitivity, lexical density, mood, modality, repetition, non-structural cohesion and structural cohesion, etc. Discourses are produced by the actualization of the meaning choices made from the meaning potentials offered by a register. Through the analysis of this speech‟s lexico-grammatical layer, its register variables are summarized as follows:Field: demonstration for civil rights.Tenor: political leader and his followers. Reflecting the roles between the leaderand follower, King as American black and his audience as American blacks (both are victims of racial discrimination), American blacks and American whites, stressing the equality between all Americans.Mode: well written before spoken delivery. Monologue. To urge devotees of civil rights to fight for equality and freedom for all American through nonviolent resistance. This is to say that the choice of its lexico-grammatical layer meets the requirements of the semantic system and the context of situation and that that dream deserves the honor as a worldwide famous public speech.The analysis also shows that language resources realizing three metafunctions can be studied separately, but they interweave with each other in discourses, and one language element may realize different metafunctions at the same time. For example, the analysis shows the repetition can be used to interpret experiential function (increasing lexical density), interpersonal function (increasing emotional appeal) and textual function (increasing cohesion).The analysis provides its readers a better understanding and a fuller appreciation of the speech. For example, its analysis of cohesive chains enables them to better understand how the parts are closely connected together to form this speech an integrated discourse.The thorough review of this thesis suggests a need for further exploration and study of this speech. Concerning time and the length of the thesis, this thesis narrows its attention on some selective analysis approaches. As a result, the broader and deeper analysis can be done through including more analysis approaches. The following are two suggestions for further analysis.1. To analysis I Have a Dream’s key and information structure as oral speech. This may lead to more findings to explain how King uses his voice to make his speech more acceptable for his audience and help raining speakers to influence their audience with their voices.2. To analyze this speech from the approach of appraisal theory. 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