| With drastic development of multi-media and information technology, language use has turned to be more and more complex and heterogenous in recent decades.Correspondingly, discourse analysis is turning to be interdisciplinary and multi-dimensional. Being a kind of mass medium, news is designed to report what has happened and spread what social values are. However, the so-called “independence,justice and objectivity†of the American press has turned out to be nothing more than an illusion. Language of news discourse is just the form while ideology the substance.Its main functions are persuasion and propaganda. One linguistic phenomenon that is worth being paid close attention to is intertextuality which has extensive information sources. If the intertextuality of news discourse were not fully taken into consideration, news discourse would not be comprehended thoroughly. Intertextuality refers to the mutual influence and complicated correlation between one text and the others. When applying intertextuality, the writer of news discourse is ingeniously analyzing and evaluating based on outside voices, which further influences and persuades the reader. However, such studies have rarely been conducted so far.In conducting the study, the author attempts to investigate the persuasive function of intertextuality in English news discourse based on the integrated approach of Aristotlean Rhetoric and Appraisal Theory. Appraisal Theory is a new development of Systemic Functional Linguistics, focusing on the attitudes and evaluations that can be negotiated in the discourse. On the other hand, there are a great number of appraisal resources and interpersonal expressions in the intertextuality of news discourse. Therefore, Appraisal Theory is the rational theory to interpret the appraisal devices in the intertextuality of news discourse. Moreover, persuasion is what rhetoric is all about. News texts are rhetorical practices. Rhetorical appeals of Aristotle are powerful in interpreting how the appraisal resources of news discourse achieve persuasion. Based on the integrated approach, this study aims to find out answers to the following questions:(1) What are the realization patterns of intertextuality in news discourse?(2) How does intertextuality as different appraisal resources achieve thepersuasive function to influence readers’ stance and ideology?In this study, 12 news reports of New York Times are chosen randomly on the first day of each month from January to December in 2013 as research data, totally12889 words. The study analyzes data with the method of qualitative analysis. Basedon manual label and such softwares as Microsoft Office Word and AntConc, data statistics is used to generalize the realization patterns of intertextuality and the location of different appraisal resources in the research data. Qualitative analysis aims at illustrating and illuminating how intertextuality as different appraisal resources achieves the persuasive function to influence readers.This study finds that:(1) intertextuality plays an essential role in news reporting,and the number of the intertextuality sources in each of the news discourse is different,and the major realization patterns of intertextuality are indirect speech and direct speech;(2) intertextuality resources account for 11.03 percent of all appraisal words,and Engagement words are used most frequently followed by Attitude words, and Graduation ones are the least used;(3) Affect, Judgement and Appreciation in the Attitude sub-system, and some appraisal words in the Graduation sub-system can realize Pathos. Furthermore, some Judgement words in the Attitude sub-system,Proclaim words, Entertain words and Attribute words in the Engagement sub-system and some Soften words in the Graduation sub-system can achieve Ethos. In addition,only Disclaim resources in the Engagement sub-system can achieve Logos. In a word,the news discourse writer ultimately achieves persuasion through these rhetorical appeals.This study not only gives us a more profound understanding of news discourse and intertextuality, but also makes us realize that Aristotlean Rhetoric, as an ancient theory, still can be applied to the analysis of modern discourse, and even though Appraisal Theory belongs to Functional theory, it still can be combined with rhetoric when dealing with discourse analysis and the result of the combination is productive.Moreover, it can assist readers to interpret the profound meaning of English news discourse, be aware of the intended persuasion, make their own judgments and stick to their own stance. |
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