Presidents’ and Queen’s New Year Speech is a typical political speech. Based
on the corpus data of New Year Speeches delivered by Chinese president, American
president and Queen Elizabeth II, this paper carries out a critical analysis on the
interpersonal meaning of the speeches by applying Fairclough’s three-dimensional
model and Hallidy’s systemic-functional grammar. Results show that there are
similarities and differences in the choice of mood, modality and pronoun to show
the power and convey interpersonal meaning, ideas, attitudes and ideologies in the
speeches. The reasons for the differences are closely related to the purpose of what
personal meaning the Presidents and Queen try to convey and the different social,
cultural backgrounds of the three countries.