2。2 Previous Studies on the Public Speech文献综述

Public speaking (sometimes termed oratory or oration) is the process or act of performing presentation (a speech) focused around an inpidual directly speaking to a live audience in a structured, deliberate manner in order to inform, influence, or entertain them。 Public speaking is commonly understood as the formal, face-to-face talking of a single person to a group of listeners。 It is closely allied to "presenting", although the latter is more often associated with commercial activity。 Most of the time, public speaking is to persuade the audience。

In public speaking, as in any form of communication, there are five basic elements, often expressed as “who is saying what to whom using what medium with what effects?” The purpose of public speaking can range from simply transmitting information, to motivating people to act, to simply telling a story。 Good orators should be able to read their audience and not only engage them, but also be able to read them。 The power of a truly great presenter is the ability to change the emotions of their listeners, not just inform them。 Public speaking can also be considered a discourse community。 Interpersonal communication and public speaking have several components that embrace such things as motivational speaking, leadership/personal development, business, customer service, large group communication, and mass communication。 Public speaking can be a powerful tool to use for purposes such as motivation, influence, persuasion, informing, translation, or simply ethos。

In current times, public speaking for business and commercial events is often done by professionals, with speakers contracted either independently, through representation by a speaker bureau paid on commission of 25-30%, or via other means。

The objectives of a public speaker’s presentation can range from simply transmitting information, to motivating people to act, to simply telling a story。 Professional public speakers often engage in ongoing training and education to refine their craft。 This may include seeking guidance to improve their speaking skills—such as learning better storytelling techniques, for example, or learning how to effectively use humour as a communication tool—as well as continuous research in their topic area of focus。

Even though the basic principles have undergone modification as societies and cultures have changed, yet remained surprisingly uniform。 The technology and the methods of this form of communication have traditionally been through oratory structure and rely on an audience。 However, new advances in technology have allowed for more sophisticated communication for speakers and public orators。 The technological and media sources that assist the public-speaking atmosphere include both videoconferencing and telecommunications。 Videoconferencing is among one of the more recent technologies that is in a way revolutionizing the way that public speakers communicate to the masses。 This technology is helpful for large conference meetings and face-to-face communication contexts, and is becoming more widespread across the world。 Rostrums hold papers for speakers; public speakers may use audience response systems。 For large assemblies, the speaker will usually speak with the aid of a public address system or microphone and loudspeaker。来*自-优=尔,论:文+网www.youerw.com

From the above review, it cannot be denied that firstly, the study of MDA is still in its initial stage both in China and abroad, the reason for which is that most of the scholars focusing on defining MDA and explore the framework of it。 Secondly, in terms of the applications of MDA, the same as that abroad, focus more on teaching and education or two-dimensional advertisements, posters, emblems, etc。, and as for the public speech, it receives scarce notice either。 To sum up, previous studies of MDA both from abroad and at home in four perspectives (interactive sociological perspective, cognitive perspective, stylistic perspective and social functional semiotic perspective) are carried out, that is to say, MDA is still a new branch of linguistic studies in recent years, and most of the studies are related to the theories, some applied researches mainly focusing on the language field itself, scarcely utilizing speeches as their research object。 Thus, there exists research space, in which public speech can be analyzed from the perceptive of MDA, in which few scholars have done before。 Thereby, this thesis is going to make a trial study of a typical public speech in hope of making some contributions to the development of multimodal discourse analysis。