An Interpersonal Metafunction Analysis of President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani’s Speechat the 72nd Session of the United Nations General Assembly

Abstract

Based on Hallidayan linguistics, Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG), an interpersonal metafunction analysis is carried out on the President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani’s speech, which in turns will help readers understand the form of political speech, and its evaluation. The aim of using Interpersonal Metafunction Analysis is the relationship between the speaker and the audiences as both parties were top politicians. Through the qualitative analysis of the speech, it wasfound that functions and variations of the language in a given circumstances are very important. Another important feature which was found during the analysis of the speech is that words must be chosen very carefully in order to make the speech more persuasive and easy to follow. The paper analyses the speech as follows: (1) Positive Declarative Clauses were used as means of conveying a message or information and convincing the addresseewith the propositions made, (2) Modalities were used to get the attentions of the audiences to specific circumstances and to end the tasks and to increase the authority of the addresser (See Appendix A). (3). The use of “we” and “our” and “you and I” patterns shortens the distance between the addresser and the audience.