A Systemic Stylistic Analysis on the Generic Structure of Martin Luther King, Jr’s Speech I Have a Dream

Abstract

Language is a useful means of peace and harmony. On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. directed a peaceful march at Washington, D.C and delivered a speech known as I Have a Dream. He used abundant repetitions of phrase and clause in the speech. In fact, the speech was written with great care although it was delivered orally. This thesis is intended to know how a language works in construing its meaning in text. Systemic functional analysis is conducted in this study by applying Systemic Functional Linguistics proposed by Halliday and Eggins. Library research is employed in this study. The data used in this study are qualitative data applying bibliographical technique as the data collection. The data are five parallel structure of generic structure of the speech: Orientation, Complication, Evaluation, Resolution, and Coda. The descriptive method is used to describe lexicogrammatical patterns, semantic components, situational dimensions and context of culture systematically. As a result, the analyses of the excerpts show that the five selected excerpts share the same Tenor: the unequal (hierarchic) power of Martin Luther King, Jr. to the civil rights supporters. Otherwise, each Field and Mode of the texts is different. Then, context of culture is also reflected in the analyses.