A Critical Discourse Analysis of Attitude in Selected Motivational Commencement Speeches

Commencement speeches are the speeches that are delivered by public figures to the graduates to influence their minds and behavior by means of the attitudes that are reflected in these speeches. What urged us to study commencement speeches is that there isn't a balance between the critical discourse analysis studies that investigate negative discourse and those that investigate positive discourse. This study aims at revealing the kinds of attitudes that are reflected in commencement speeches. The study adopts Martin and Rose's (2007) model which deals with language in social context that evolves within the field of Systemic Functional Linguistics. The study raises a question about the types of attitudes that are reflected in commencement speeches. It hypothesizes that various types of attitudes are utilized in commencement speeches. Finally, The study concluded that commencement speakers utilize the three types of attitude, namely appreciation (which is first in frequency), judgment (which is second in frequency) and affect (which is last in frequency) in their positive and negative sense.