Paper Title
A Linguistic Analysis of Halliday’s Systemic-Functional Theory in Obama’s Political Discourses

Abstract
This study aims to explore the linguistic features of the political speeches by Barack Obama during his campaign for the presidential elections in 2012 and 2013. Two speeches will be approached from semantic and, generally, linguistic perspectives, featured in the “critical discourse analysis” components. The analysis of Obama’s speeches is guided by Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) theory. The speeches are analysed in terms of transitivity, modality and personal pronouns in which we can grasp the effective and dominate principals and tropes utilized in political discourse, which contribute to the understanding of the text and its interpretation. Keywords - Critical discourse analysis, Linguistics, Political speeches, Systemic Functional linguistics, Transitivity, United States Elections.