AN IDEATIONAL METAFUNCTION ANALYSIS OF BARACK OBAMA’S SECOND TERM INAUGURAL SPEECH

Sadiq Aminu                                            

Department of Languages and Liberal Studies

Ramat Polytechnic, Maiduguri, Maiduguri, Nigeria.

Email: meetsadiq22@yahoo.com                                                   

ABSTRACT

This study presents an ideational metafunction analysis of Barack Obama’s second term inaugural speech. Ideational metafunction is one of the three metafunctions of M.A.K Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) and it was also used as a theoretical framework for the analysis in this study. The analysis involves the analysis of Process Types and their Participants. It was found that Material Process (process of doing) was the most frequently used Process type in the speech while Verbal Process(process of saying) was the least used Process type. It was concluded that ideational metafunction helps the reader to understand the intention and the message the speech is trying to pass.