A Multidimensional Analysis of Register Features in UN General Assembly Speeches

This study employs Multidimensional Analysis (MF/MD) to examine the linguistic characteristics of speeches during the United Nations General Debate and the variations among sub-registers of speeches from different countries. The research indicates that the overall General Debate speeches exhibit formal informative non-narrative clear reference moderate persuasion and concrete language features which are conducive to the clear and effective communication of information and viewpoints on the international stage. Among the sub-registers of different countries: variations within the General Debate speech register demonstrate sub-register categories that influence the overall performance of the General Debate dimensions and reflect to a certain extent the discourse characteristics of countries from different cultural backgrounds. Within the intersecting and hybrid sub-registers of the United Nations General Debate: all countries' speeches are distinctly persuasive with the United States and the United Kingdom showing significant differences from other countries. The speeches of these two countries have weaker objectivity lower abstraction but high referential clarity and low context dependence. Italy has a strong narrative quality while the United States has the weakest. Except for China the speeches of other countries are concise in information expression with significant differences.