Abstract:
The study presents a case study on the use of rhetoric in anniversary
speeches of heads of Wesley Girls’ Senior High School and St. Augustine’s
College in Cape Coast, using Halliday and Matthiessen (2004) model of
transitivity and Bhatia’s (1993) genre theory. The results show that
anniversary speeches of heads of public Senior High Schools have a six- move
structure, with moves two and three used by the schools to persuade audience
and promote the schools. It was also found that the schools used the material
processes to show the audience that they are working institutions, by
indicating what they have achieved, what they are doing and what they will
do. This representation of the schools through the transitivity concept and the
move analysis promoted the schools. The study has implications for further
research on the anniversary speeches of heads of public Senior High Schools
in Ghana
