Linguistic features of donald trump’s tweets from the systemic functional grammar perspective

NGUYỄN XUÂN THILINGUISTIC FEATURES OF DONALD TRUMP’S TWEETS FROM THE SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR PERSPECTIVE MASTER THESIS IN ENGLISH LINGUISTICS Binh Dinh, 2020... NGUYỄN XUÂN THILINGUI

NGUYỄN XUÂN THI

LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF DONALD TRUMP’S TWEETS FROM THE SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR PERSPECTIVE

MASTER THESIS IN ENGLISH LINGUISTICS

Binh Dinh, 2020

NGUYỄN XUÂN THI

LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF DONALD TRUMP’S TWEETS FROM THE SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR PERSPECTIVE

FIELD: English Linguistics CODE: 8.22.02.01

Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr NGUYỄN THỊ THU HIỀN

NGUYỄN XUÂN THI

CÁC ĐẶC ĐIỂM NGÔN NGỮ CỦA DONALD TRUMP’S TWEETS

THEO QUAN ĐIỂM NGỮ PHÁP CHỨC NĂNG

Chuyên ngành: Ngôn ngữ Anh

Mã số: 8.22.02.01

Người hướng dẫn: PGS TS NGUYỄN THỊ THU HIỀN

Quy Nhon, 2020

NGUYỄN XUÂN THI

Secondly, My sincere thanks also go to all my friends for sharinghelpful materials and experiences during my study They raised manyprecious points in our discussion and I hope that I have managed to addressseveral of them here.

Thirdly, I am deeply grateful to all lectures not only from Quy NhonUniversity but also from other universities for their whole-heartedcontribution to sharpening my academic knowledge during the previoussemester I would like to sincerely thank for the cooperation and support ofthe Department of Postgraduate Training and the Department of ForeignLanguages of Quy Nhon University

Last but not least, I would like to thank my family who always stands

by me while my thesis was in process and has helped me overcome manyunexpected difficulties during the course and the thesis

Quy Nhon, 2020

This thesis applied the Systematic Functional Grammar frameworkdeveloped by Halliday to offer an overall analysis of the linguistic features ofPresident Donald Trump‟s Tweets More specifically, the main purpose of thisstudy is to investigate three metafunctions of the language to reveal theexperiential, textual, and interpersonal features of Donald Trump's tweets.President Donald Trump‟s Tweets which are from the reliable website:https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump are collected and analyzed Thequantitative and qualitative method is employed in this thesis to investigatethe frequency of the linguistic resources and to discuss three meaningsexpressed through their functional systems, namely Transitivity, Theme,Rheme, and Mood structure In detail, as for Interpersonal features, thedeclarative mood presenting dominant Mood and modal verbs as a type ofModality are utilized at a higher rate than the others In terms of textualfeatures, unmarked topical themes become the dominant theme type amongthe others Regarding experiential features, the tendency in the use of materialprocess and the relational process is more favored than other processes by thepresenter in Donal Trump's Tweets From these results, the thesis is expected

to significantly contribute to addressing the gap in previous studies related tofunctional grammar and helpful material for people who are interested inwriting, especially writing Tweets

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Rationale

The past few decades have witnessed an emergence of discourseanalysis as the main topic in a large number of worldwide scholars‟researches because of their language in use which is in an organized and well-established structure

Discourse analysis has been taken up in a variety of disciplines in thehumanities and social sciences by various researchers such as Encarnacion(2011) to redefine what Critical Discourse Analysis is; Robin (2011) usingconversation analysis as an impressive and valuable approach to studyingdiscourse; Scherbak (2018) pinpointing the essential methodology requiredfor analyzing media discourse; Maria (2010) analyzing written academicdiscourse by combining two approaches: corpus linguistics and discourseanalysis; Elena (2010) using Discourse Analysis to understand the genre ofNewspaper Article; and Basil (1987) investigating Narrative discourse

As for the genre of politician speeches, various studies using differentapproaches or theoretical frameworks have investigated different features ofthis genre For example, Wang (2010) uses Critical Discourse Analysis toidentify features of Obama's speeches, Jetal (2019) compares Hillary Clintonand Donald Trump's language use by applying the Critical Discourse Analysisframework, or Beeman (2018) applies Discourse Analysis to identify threecharacteristics of Trump's speeches

Among the approaches to discourse analysis, Functional grammar isrecently considered the useful one to help researchers understand thelinguistic features of the language in use in different genres such as academic,

Hidalgo Tenorio (2011) news, Joye (2010) and even political speeches,Bayram (2010) As a result, Functional grammar has proved itself as a veryeffective grammatical approach to understand the different features ofdiscourse.

From what has been mentioned in the literature, it is clear that althoughpolitician's discourses of different genres have been deeply and widelyinvestigated, Tweets seem to be the linguistically untouched field Despitetheir prevalence in the integrated world as a tool for politicians to expresstheir viewpoints as well as their policies For the above reason, I have decided

to write the topic “Linguistic features of Donald Trump’s Tweets from the Systemic Functional Grammar Perspective” for my thesis.

1.2 Aim and Objectives

1.2.1 Aim of the study

The aim of the study is to investigate the linguistic features of DonaldTrump‟s Tweets following Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) developed

by Halliday (1994) More specifically, these linguistic features would beidentified via the analysis of experiential, interpersonal, and textual features

1.2.2 Objectives of the study

To achieve the aim above, the study is to focus on the following objectives:

- To investigate the Experiental features of Donald Trump‟s Tweets via

Transitivity system

- To identify the Interpersonal features of Donald Trump‟s

Tweets via

Mood and Modality

- To analyze the Textual features of Donald Trump‟s Tweets via Theme

and Rheme structure

1.3 Research questions

questions have been raised:

1 How are Experiential features realized in Donald Trump‟s Tweets?

2 How are Interpersonal features realized in Donald Trump‟s Tweets?

3 How are Textual features realized in Donald Trump‟s Tweets?

1.4 Significance of the study

Identifying and analyzing three features in Donald Trump's Tweetsoffers many contributions in theory and practice Theoretically, while aconsiderable number of studies related to one of three metafunctions havebeen carried out, there has not been a thorough research done on this type ofgenre in terms of the combination of three metafunctions Therefore, thefindings of this research are expected to make a significant contribution to thetheory of Systemic Functional Grammar perfectly Practically, the researchhopefully becomes the basis for further research on political leaders‟messages on Twitter as a social network

1.5 Scope of the study

Although there are many ways to identify the linguistic features of adiscourse, the study focuses on analyzing three metafunctions of SFG In thisstudy, 212 Donald Trump‟s Tweets from October to November in 2019 arecollected for the investigation There have been many functional approaches,but the research is strictly carried out based on Halliday‟s framework

1.6 Organization of the study

Chapter 1, Introduction, includes the rationale, the aim and objectives,

research questions, the significance of the study, scope of the study, andorganization of the study

Chapter 2, Literature Review, reviews Functional Grammar Theory by

Halliday (1994) Some previous studies from the perspective of those theoriesand Tweets are also introduced

Chapter 3, Methodology, consists of research method, research

procedures, and the procedure of data collection and data analysis for the study

Chapter 4, Findings and discussions, presents the results of the data

analysis related to the linguistic characteristics of three metafunctions used inDonald Trump‟s Tweets

Chapter 5, Conclusion and implications, summarizes the major

findings, draws conclusions and pedagogical implications, limitations andputs forward suggestions for further studies

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Systemic functional grammar

Michael Halliday as the father of Functional Grammar really helps thestudy of language in a practical way In fact, this theory is a tool to considerand analyze the language in use Halliday (1985) indicates “Systemiclinguistics is a theory of meaning as a choice, by which a language, or anyother semiotic system, is interpreted as networks of interlocking options”.Halliday (1994) also emphasizes that SFG is to give priority to paradigmaticrelations and interprets language not as a set of structures, a network ofsystems, but as interrelated sets of options for making meaning

Metafunction is known as the generalized functional principle oflinguistic organization In SFG, functions are performed through language,which explains why speakers say something and say it in the way they do.Speakers are encouraged to have to make relevant choices among three kinds

of features including the Experiential features, the Interpersonal features, andTextual features The experiential function of a language is to talk about ourexperience of the world, including the world in our minds, to describe eventsand states, and the entities involved in them The interpersonal function is toenable us to participate in communicative acts with other people to establishand maintain relations with them, to express our own viewpoint on things, toelicit and exchange theirs, or/and to influence their behavior The textualfunction mentions the use of language to organize our experiential, logical,and interpersonal features into a coherent whole It can be seen that althoughthese three metafunctions are in cooperation to produce meaning, each ofthem is about a different aspect of the world, and it is concerned with adifferent mode of the meaning of clauses Therefore, we cannot deny their

equal importance since they all semantically relevant And here is the figureabout the three metafunctions.

Figure 2.1 Metafunctional Solidarity across Planes (Halliday and Martin, 1993, p.34)

2.1.1 The Experiential metafunction

The Experiential metafunction refers to the use of language to construeand organize one‟s experience of the world It is further divided into theexperiential and the logical subfunction The former describes clauses asrepresentation and focuses on content and ideas, and how people activelyconstrue and make sense of reality, classifying the objects and events withintheir awareness (Halliday, 1994) On the other hand, the logical subfunctionfocuses on the relationship between ideas, or in Halliday‟s words, systems

“which set up logical–semantic relationships between one clausal unit andanother” (Halliday, 1994), and the emphasis is put on the symbolicrepresentation of reality and experience through language

The Experiential metafunction deals with how reality is represented inlanguage and asks questions such as “who, (does) what, whom, how, why,where, and when” Halliday (1994) has suggested that this metafunction is

realized in the transitivity system, which includes processes, participants, and circumstances.

In the transitivity system, there are six different types of processes inEnglish The three major ones are material, mental, and relational, each with

a small set of subtypes Besides, there are three further types, behavioural,

verbal, and existential A process consists of three components: (i) theProcess itself; (ii) Participants in the Process; (iii) Circumstances associatedwith the process The nature of the process determines how many and whatkind of participants are involved

2.1.1.1 Material Processes

Material clauses construe doings and happenings Prototypically, these

concrete changes in the material world that can be perceived

Chia

Actor

(Bloor & Bloor, 2004, p.109)

In the above example, “bought” represents the material process, while

“Chia” and “some curry” are the two participants Being the performer of theaction, the first is labeled Actor, which is quite self-explanatory, whereas

“some curry” is the Goal in this clause “Yesterday” is not a participant, but aCircumstance While elsewhere a significant change marks the choicebetween active and passive voice, where the subject in the passive formcorresponds to the Complement in the active, participants retain the samefunctions of Actor and Goal regardless of voice

Material process clauses can also contain two other participants:Beneficiary and Range The Beneficiary is a participant in a material processclause with a benefactive role, corresponding to the item that answers to the

question, “to whom?” It usually involves verbs such as „give’, „send’,

„offer’, etc.

Material process with Beneficiary

(Bloor & Bloor, 2004, p.110)

In the material process clause in the example above, „Paul’ is the

Beneficiary

The Range is very similar to the Goal The main difference between thetwo participants is that Range remains basically unaffected by the action,while the action is usually directed to the participant labeled as Goal.Furthermore, Range is usually „restricted to intransitive clauses‟ Oneparticipant in the following example is Range:

Armen and his friends

Actor

2.1.1.2 Mental processes

Mental clauses entail the description of states of mind and cognitive

and psychological events Verbs such as think, feel, hate, like, know, fear,

want, see, hear, enjoy, etc., realise these processes The sentences below are

examples of such clauses

Mental process of emotion with nominal group as Phenomenon

She

Senser

Mental process of perception with embedded clause as Phenomenon

Mental process of fact with projected clause

(Eggins, 2004, p.228)Mental process clauses contain only two participants: Senser and

Phenomenon Senser is usually the Subject of the sentence and the

“experiencer” of the Phenomenon

2.1.1.3 Behavioural processes

Behavioural processes have two participants, namely Behaver andBehaviour which is similar to Range in material processes Behaver is theanimate participant which is obligatory and Behaviour is not a real participantbut merely adds specification to the process, which sometimes appears

The Arab boyfriend

Sayer

Although many verbal processes occur with a nominal element, aVerbiage, it is a distinctive feature of verbal processes that they project Arelationship of interdependency between the two clauses gives quoting orquoted, whereas a relationship of dependency between projected andprojecting clause gives indirect or reported speech

John

Sayer

Target is another participant in this process.

I

Sayer

(Halliday, 1994, p.103)

2.1.1.5 Relational processes

Verbs, such as be, become, seem, appear, and verbs of possession

realize Relational processes Such processes are further divided into two

sub-classifications: Attributive and Identifying processes The first kind of process

assigns an attribute to an item, which can be categorized as intensive,

possessive, and circumstantial

Relational Process of intensive attribution

Diana

Carrier

(Eggins, 2004, p.240)

In the example above, “a talkative dinner guest” is the attribute and

“Diana” is the Carrier of the attribution The process is realized by “is”, the

present tense of the most typical copular verb “be”

Some possessive structures can be labelled as attributive relational

process, as exemplified below:

Relational Process of possessive attribution

Relational Process of Circumstantial attribution

Attributive Relation clause may contain circumstance as a participant.This special type can be seen in the following example

The best place to give blood

Carrier

(Eggins, 2004, p.239)

Identifying Relational Process

Identifying process contains two participants: Identifier and Identified

of Token-Value The purpose of this type of relational process is to use aparticipant to identify another participant as shown below

May be

The following table summarizes types of processes:

Table 2.1 Summary of Processes, their meanings and Participants

Table 2.2 Types of circumstances (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004, p.291)

2.1.2 The interpersonal metafunction

The interpersonal metafunction is concerned with language as a form ofinteraction between people; therefore, it involves the relationship betweenspeaker and hearer and it is concerned with clauses of exchange When apiece of new information appears, there are two cases that can happen Thefirst case happens when the speakers give something or some information tothe hearers and they receive something or some information from the hearers.And the second case occurs when the speakers demand something or someinformation from the hearers and they receive those from the hearers

Table 2.3 Primary speech role ( Halliday, 1994, p.69) (ii)Commodity

(i)Role

Giving

Demanding

As can be seen from table 2.3, statements and questions involve

exchanges of information and are called Propositions while offers and commands are exchanges of goods and services, called Proposals The choice

of the speech role will affect the role of the speakers and the hearers incommunication Different speech roles will produce different types ofstatements, including a question, an offer, a command, or a statement

2.1.2.1 Mood

An analysis of the interpersonal metafunction focuses on the two main

elements of the clause, namely Mood and Residue Mood consists of theSubject, i.e a nominal group, and the Finite, i.e the first element of the verbalgroup The Residue is made up of the Predicator, i.e the rest of the verbalgroup, Complements, and Adjuncts Thus, a clause consists of Mood +Residue The Mood element can be identified in Mood tags In different types

of speech roles, the position of mood and residue can be changed

Do

FiniteMOOD

Just

Adj: moodMOOD

2.1.2.2 Modality

Modality is an important system that is used to express interpersonalmeaning Most writers use this system to convey their idea, belief, oruncertainty Halliday (1994) states that modality is" the speaker's judge of theprobabilities or obligations involved in what he is saying" There are twotypes of modality: modalization which is about probability or frequency ofpropositions and modulation which refers to the obligation of inclination

Table 2.4 Types of Modality (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004, p 128)

Modality

Probability

Modalization

UsualityInclination

Modulation

Obligation

Furthermore, according to Halliday, all types of modality include threevalues: low, high, and median By using modality's values, the writer canshow the interpersonal meaning clearly

Table 2.5 The degree of Modalization & Modulation (Halliday, 1985, p 357)

Modalization

Modulation

2.1.3 The Textual metafunction

Halliday (1994, p.36) states that textual meaning is defined as an act of

" creating relevance to context" As a message structure, a clause consists of aTheme accompanied by a Rheme The Theme is “the point of departure of themessage” carried by one clause (Bloor& Bloor 1995, p.71) and the Rheme is

"the remainder of the message" in which the Theme is developed

The Theme can be divided into three subtypes: Topical, Interpersonal,and Textual Theme

2.1.3.1 Topical Theme

Topical Theme is realized by the first group of a clause that has theexperiential function, including three experiential elements like participants,process, and circumstantial factors

It can play a role as a participant

The duke

Theme (participant)

As a circumstance gives information about time, place, manner, cause,

small creatures live and breathe

unmarked Theme If the theme of a clause conflates the subject, it is calledunmarked Theme.

2.1.3.2 Interpersonal Theme

Interpersonal Theme is an element coming before Rheme indicating therelation between participants in the text, or the position or viewpoint which istaken in the clause This theme includes finite, a vocative, and a modaladjunct

Do

Finite

Interpersonal

chosen this framework to identify all the linguistic features of Tweets as agenre of communication.

2.2 The application of Systemic Functional Grammar in discourse analysis

Functional Grammar has been applied in discourse analysis and proved

to be the most influential tool to understand genres

At the level of the thesis, To (2015) employs SFG as the main theoryand methodological framework to study the linguistic complexity in Englishtextbooks utilized in teaching English as a foreign language with specialreference to the Vietnamese context Findings of the study reveal that thelanguage of textbook texts mostly get more complicated at high levels and thedivergence between descriptive statistic of linguistic features used in thescience-related texts and those in the non-science ones were not considered inthe same book In the same way, Lê Thị Bích Thủy (2015) comparedThematic features of English news reports and editorials Her study not onlyfocused on three kinds of Theme (Topical, Textual and Interpersonal Themes)and Thematic progression but also try to identify the similarities anddifferences between English news reports and editorials Ton (2005) studiesthe three meanings including experiential, interpersonal, and textual meaning

in the travel advertisements written in English and in Vietnamese One of hernoticeable study results indicates that giving information about touristactivities, events, and descriptions is the main purpose of traveladvertisements Nguyễn Thị Hạnh (2012) investigated the structure of Themeand Rheme in English and Vietnamese political speeches and their semantic,pragmatic aspects Choosing in the light of Functional Grammar, this thesisbrought out the identification and classification of their thematic patterns,figure out their distribution rates and the correlation among those thematic

patterns and pick out their similarities as well as differences in semantic,pragmatic level.

At the level of articles, Feng (2013) indicates some issues including thenature of functional grammar, some important concepts of functionalgrammar, the divergence between traditional grammar and functionalgrammar Additionally, the author also gives some implications for Englishteaching and learning to assist teachers to understand the theory of functionalgrammar and its positive role in school contexts Another study to bementioned here is the one conducted by Ye (2010) to analyze the Interpersonalmetafunction of Barack Obama‟s Victory speech His findings show thatpositive declarative dominate Barack Obama‟s Victory speech; ranking thesecond are imperative clauses; modal verbal operators used frequently are

“will”, “can” and “must”; the first personal pronoun is mostly employed in Obama‟s Victory speech while the second personal pronoun “you” comes

after Xu and Zhang (2015) write an article about the crucial role of functionalgrammar and illustrate its application to the teaching of reading To contribute

to enhancing reading skills, they give some effective techniques for thereading of English learners in the beginning and advanced proficiency levels.Also based on Halliday‟s SFG, Chen (2018) analyzed the inaugural speech ofDonald Trump mainly from the perspectives of transitivity, modality, personalpronoun, and coherence in order to reveal the speaker‟s political intention andhelp readers understand the meaning of discourse, cultivate their criticalconsciousness and analytical ability This study concluded that Trump useddifferent language forms to transmit, change, and maintain audiences‟ideology subtly At the same time, it had a positive effect on the development

of critical discourse analysis

Regarding books level, Yang (2017) studied on the Interpersonal

metafunction of Barack Obama‟s Inaugural Address following the perspective

of SFG In the process of detailed analysis, Yang discussed the Interpersonalroles, Mood, and Modality system at the level of Interpersonal function Thefindings were that the plural forms of the first person are mostly used,declarative clauses have an absolute advantage, and the medium and lowmodal auxiliaries appear most frequently in Obama‟s address, which aimed tohelp readers understand and evaluate the speech regarding its suitability, thus

to provide some guidance for readers to make better speeches

2.3 Tweets as a genre

According to Wikipedia, Twitter is a free online social networkingservice that allows users to read, message, and update tweets called tweets, aform of microblogging Tweets that are limited to a maximum of 280characters spread quickly within the messages group of friends or can bedisplayed to the public Founded in 2006, Twitter has become a globalphenomenon The tweets can be just a personal stream of news to timely localupdates faster and more than mainstream media

Regarding studies relating to Tweets, which are described with aspoken genre to help the readers understand fast what things the utterancewants to express Michele (2011) presents Systemic Functional Linguisticabout a linguistic perspective on Twitter The result of the analysis examinesthe evaluative language used to the affiliate in tweets This both renders thelanguage searchable and is used to upscale the call to affiliate with valuesexpressed in the tweet By using genre analysis and Halliday's framework,Ussama; Soon Ae; Vijayalakshmi; Jaideep (2017) investigate about theanalysis of political discourse on twitter in the context of the 2016 USpresidential elections The study results reveal that these short texts evaluatehow accurately Twitter represented the public opinion and real-world events

of significance related to the elections Meanwhile, Naci; Nilay; Ismet; ÖzlemÖzdeşim (2015) use critical discourse analysis to investigate the recurringspeech patterns in the tweets of top-level politicians during the Gezi Parkprotests that started in Istanbul Turkey in June 2013 and spread the countryrapidly Their findings indicate that the tweets to draw conclusions on whetherthe politicians' statements represent marginalization and polarization effortsduring the Gezi Park protests, and the politicians' tweets are mainlycharacterized by a discourse that guides the public into some consciousdirection that may reproduce marginalization and polarization among thepublic at large Marcel; Todd (2013) present the use of Systemic FunctionalLinguistics to compares four Dutch and four British national tabloids andbroadsheets, asking if tabloid journalists are relying more on this second-handcoverage than their colleagues from quality papers Findings reveal that inwhich sections of the paper tweets are included and what kinds of sources arequoted, and individual tweets or interaction between various agents on Twittereven triggers news coverage.

In short, there have been, up to now, a few types of research that aretaken into one of three metafunctions such as interpersonal, experiential, ortextual However, there have not been any researches that discuss allmetafunctions, especially in Tweets Therefore, we expect to see a generalpicture of three metafunctions in this study

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3.1 Research methods

In order to conduct the thesis, many different methods were used toanalyze the linguistic features of Tweets from the perspective of functionalgrammar

Firstly, the descriptive method was manipulated to describe grammarelements expressing three metafunctions and their subtypes in Tweets

Secondly, the quantitative method and qualitative method were alsoharmoniously combined The former was used to investigate the frequency ofcategories of metafunctions in the data while the latter was applied to discussthe characteristics of all three linguistic features of Tweets

3.2 Data collection

To carry out the research, 212 tweets from October to November in

2019 were collected from Donald Trump‟s Twitter The topics covered allaspects such as education, health, and security The data were collected fromthe official webpage: https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump The Tweets wereencoded as T1, T2, T3, , Tn Because the unit of analysis was clauses,clauses were also encoded as C1, ., Cn As a result, C1T1 could beunderstood as clause 1 of Tweet 1

C1T1.Thank you to Lt Bob Kroll of the great Minneapolis Police

Department for your kind words on @foxandfriends // C2T1 The Police are fighting the Radical Left Mayor, and his ridiculous Uniform

Ban.// C3T1 Actually, I LOVE the Cops for Trump shirts.// C4T1 Want

to bring some home.// C5T1 I am with you 100%!!!!

3.3 Data Analysis

After the data were encoded, the samples were taken into consideration

to identify three linguistic features via three grammar tools: Transitivity,Mood, and Theme structure.

Regarding Experiential features, the writer identified six types ofprocesses The frequency of each type was counted and then illustrated bycharts to emerge the way Donald Trump chose to express his experience

In terms of the Interpersonal features, the writer focused on the Moodand types of Modality The occurrence of each item was demonstrated bycharts and tables Then typical examples were analyzed to reveal the wayDonald Trump contacted with the readers

For the Textual features, three typical kinds of themes namely TopicalTheme, Interpersonal Theme, and Textual Theme were analyzed andsynthesized After that, the quantitative method was used to calculate thedistribution of these subtypes Then, the distribution of these themes waspresented with examples and charts

3.4 Validity and Reliability

Reliability and validity were the two most important criteria toguarantee the quality of the data collection procedures

The theoretical frameworks from well-known linguists were selected.The study was built and analyzed according to the theoretical background ofthe famous researcher's reliable publication

Besides, the data were collected from a reliable website Theconclusion of the study was drawn from the findings with samples andstatistics

Therefore, it could be said that the thesis was valid and reliable

3.5 Research Procedures

Firstly, the writer collected Donald Trump‟s Tweets on the official website: https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump

Secondly, clauses were identified and coded; Then the components ofthe Experiential features, Interpersonal features, and Textual features wererealized in each clause.

Next, all clauses were qualitatively studied to reveal the experiential,interpersonal, and textual features

Then, these features were statistically processed to help reveal thefrequency of each element in the data

Finally, the results were exemplified by detailed examples

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

The consequences of the research manifested in this chapter comprisethree parts: Interpersonal features, Textual features, and Experiential features

4.1.1 Mood in Donald Trump’s Tweets

Two major parts in constructing mood system are Subject and Finite,which are identified as integral elements to realize interpersonal features ofthe text As mentioned above, three typical types of Mood are Declarative,Interrogative, and Imperative This table below will express how Mood typesare distributed in Donald Trump's Tweets

Table 4.1 Mood types in Donald Trump’s Tweets.

The above results reveal that Declarative mood is the major Mood typethat the speaker utilizes in his speeches with the aim to provide valuableinformation for readers And we can also easily realize the structure of thisDeclarative mood occurring up to 852 times and beomes the most populartype of Mood in Donald Trump's Tweets Some examples extracted fromDonald Trump's Tweets.

[T13,C2] The Whistleblower has ties to one of my democrat opponents The Whistleblower has ties to one of my democrat

The majority declarative of mood shows that the feature of themessages is giving the information which the readers need Donald Trump'smessage is often a text where he informs the events which happened on that

day We can see the regularity of declarative in Table 4.2.

Table 4.2 Declarative structures in Donald Trump’s Tweets

Declarative structures

Total

As shown in table 4.2, 93.7% of the declarative structures are

affirmative statements, whereas only 6.3% are negative ones

[T95,C1] Nervous Nancy Pelosi is doing everything possible to destroy

the Republican Party.

Nervous Nancy Pelosi

SubjectMood

[T98,C1] Our Country cannot afford for the Democrats in Congress to

take a one year vacation from any productive legislation just

Our Country

Subject

As can be seen from these above examples, the role of the speaker in

Tweet is to give information and send messages to readers and the role of the

readers is only to receive the information from presenter

There are two kinds of declarative clauses: full and elliptical declarative as

shown in chart 4.1

declarative

21.5%

Full declarative 78.5%

Chart 4.1 Distribution of full and elliptical declarative in Donald Trump’s tweets

The writer can use full declarative or elliptical declarative in a message,which depends on his purposes Most of the tweets are full declarative toclarify the content of the messages, making up 78.5% However, many clausesare elliptical declaratives that are used to shorten the sentences, only 21.5%, atypical feature of tweets To avoid separating clauses and make the link for thewhole message, the elliptical declaratives are implemented for the speakers toconnect one idea to others It is called elliptical declarative as there is a lack

of subject in the preceding clause

It can be said that elliptical declarative is one of the prominant features

of Tweets With these declaratives, Twitters, Donald Trump in this case, canshorten the message without affecting reader's comprehension The mostpopular position for an elliptical subject refering to the tweeter is at thebeginning of the tweets For example,

[T150,C1] Won 5 out of 6 elections in Kentucky,

[T155,C1] Just had a meeting with top representatives from Egypt,

Ethiopia, and Sudan to help solve their long running dispute on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, one of the largest in the world, currently being built.

In T150, C1 or T155, C1 Donald Trump has deleted the subject,

referring to himself to shorten the message This kind of elliptical subject canstill easily be understood thanks to the context.

However, the more popular elliptical declarative can be seen in the lack

of subject referring to the people or thing is the previous clause, as in T136,C2

[T136,C2] I hope everyone in the Great State of Virginia will get out

and (everyone^) vote on Tuesday in all of the local and state elections

to send a signal to D.C that you want lower taxes, a strong Military, Border & 2nd Amendment, great healthcare, and must take care of our Vets Vote republican.

It is clear that in T136, the subject 'everyone' is deleted in clause 2

because it is also the subject in clause 1

In some case, elliptical declarative happens at the exixtential clause as

in [T7,C1]

[T7,C1] Big Rally in Louisiana on Friday night Must force a runoff with a Liberal Democrat Governor, John Bel Edwards, who has let your Taxes and Car Insurance get too high, and will never protect your 2nd Amendment.Vote for one of our two great Republicans on Saturday, force a runoff!

It can be easily recognized that in T7,C1 the structure 'there is' is

elliptical

As a result, it can be concluded that elliptical declaratives in Tweets canhappen when the tweeter omit the subject refering to himself, to other people

or to the structure 'there is'.

As for Interpersonal clauses, although accounting for only 3.1%, theyare used in Tweets to help the president Donald Trump show his contact withthe readers with many different purposes For example:

[T49,C1] Is he leaving due to bad ratings, or some other less important reason?

From this example, Donald Trump raised the question to emphasize thereason why his opponent left the election campage Another case as in[T64,C8] he asked the question to find the reader‟s agreement on what he didfor the country

[T64,C8] I am the only person who can fight for the safety of our troops & bring them home from the ridiculous & costly Endless Wars, and be scorned Democrats always liked that position, until I took it Democrats always liked Walls, until I built them Do you see what‟s happening here?

Regarding Imperative clause, Donald Trump often uses them toencourage the readers to do something, behave in something or hope forsomething It is expressed in these following examples

[T92,C6] Enjoy!

[T62,C6] Pray for her! She is a very sick person!

[T8,C5] Vote Republican, the Party of Honest Abe Lincoln!

4.1.2 Modality in Donald Trump’s Tweets

Modality which is used to acknowledge the interpersonal meaningincludes two subtypes: Modalization and Modulation with three values: high,median, and low Modalization expresses the degree of probability andusuality through the choice of finite modal operator and modal adjuncts.Modulation expresses obligation and inclination through finite modal

operators and expansion of predicators like "He is willing to do it" or " he is supposed to do it".

The following part will indicate how modality is employed to show theInterpersonal metafunction of the language of Tweets