A Positive Discourse Analysis With Appraisal Theory:A Case Study Of Chinese TV Public Service Advertisements

As a product in the new age,Chinese TV public service advertisements not only develop from the historical and cultural background of the reform and opening-up policy,but also conform to economic tide of socialist market economy,which implies that Chinese TV public service advertisements have great influence.With the rapid development of society and technology,Chinese TV public service advertisements aim to deliver positive and affirmative emotional appeal to audience,and simultaneously are created to be healthy mental nutrition which is easier to be accepted by the public.A general review of previous studies shows that most scholars analyze Chinese TV public service advertisements mainly from two perspectives: multiple discourse analysis based on systematic functional linguistics and multimodal metaphor based on cognitive linguistics.Thereinto,the pictures,voices and colors in TV public service advertisements are regarded as the main research object,while few scholars investigate emotional appeal of verbal language in Chinese TV public service advertisements.Positive discourse analysis is put forward to advocate that people should consider the content of discourse in positive attitude in order to establish a harmonious discourse atmosphere and people should learn to look upon problems in a positive way in order to strive for development by taking the essence and discarding the dregs.Based on above-mentioned statement,168 Chinese TV public service advertisements is research object in this thesis,which are selected from Chinese preeminent radio and television public service advertisements from September in 2014 to August in 2017.Considering different themes of Chinese TV public service advertisements,TV public service ads are divided into eight types to make contrastive analysis in thesis.From the perspective of positive discourse analysis and based on Appraisal Theory,the analytical approach of positive discourse analysis,it will be revealed that how the emotional appeal is distributed in terms of distinct public service ads and how the positive emotional appeal works in TV public service ads in this thesis.Accordingly,judgemental meanings of verbal language in 168 Chinese TV public service ads take the largest proportion in attitudal system and the proportion of appreciative meanings are in the second place,which implies the fundamental purpose of TV public service ads is to persuade the public to regularize their behavior.What’s more,although positive emotional appeal is more than negative emotional appeal in the eight types of TV public service ads on the whole,negative emotional appeal takes comparatively high proportion in the public service ads with the theme of beneficence and salvation,sanitation and health.When audience watch this sort of TV public service ads,it is possible for them to have unpleasant feelings.Therefore,negative expression should be used more cautiously.