How Is Hong Kong Protest Represented In Chinese And American Media

Appraisal Theory includes three major subsystems:attitude,engagement,and gradation,which reveals appraiser’s attitudes,emotions,and values to the appraised.Since the establishment of Appraisal Theory,linguists and scholars have studied it theoretically and practically.The applied researches are mainly concerned with the analysis of attitudinal resources in the discourse,among which news discourse is the most studied.Objectivity is emphasized in news reports.However,influenced by politics,society,and culture,news discourse often implies subjective stances and viewpoints of the authors and their clients.On February 13,Hong Kong officially launched the legislative amendment procedure,which was opposed by Hong Kong’s business and legal circles.Since June violence in Hong Kong has escalated.The Chinese and American media have reported a lot on the issue.Under the influence of political stance and ideology,the American and Chinese media make reports on the issue in different ways.Within the framework of attitude system,this paper makes a comparative analysis of the attitudinal resources in the American and Chinese news about Hong Kong protests,explores the ideologies implied in the news discourse and their realization ways so as to provide some inspirations for readers’ interpretation of the Hong Kong protests and Sino-US ideology.The corpus of this study is selected from 46 pieces of news about Hong Kong protests in the Global Times and Washington Post,which date from June 10 to August 10,2019.The research questions in this paper are:1)How are attitudinal resources distributed in American and China news discourse?Is there any difference?2)How are the subsystems of affect,judgment and appreciation distributed in both news discourse towards a specific appraisal object?Is there any difference?3)How are the attitudinal resources employed in news discourse to convey the reporters’ standpoints?What are those standpoints on Hong Kong protests?Through analysis and discussion,the main conclusions of this study are:l)The most-appraised in Washington Post is Hong Kong government while Global Times evaluates the protesters most frequently.In Washington Post,the frequency of affect meaning is almost equal to that of judgement meaning.But in Global Times,judgement meaning accounts for the largest in all attitudinal resources;2)to the appraisal objects"Hong Kong protests" and "protesters" Washington Post employs a small amount of negative attitudinal resources most of which are quoted from the speeches of Hong Kong government.But Global Times utilizes a large amount of negative attitudinal resources which are mostly explicit satisfaction or propriety resources.To the appraisal object"Hong Kong government",Washington Post presents a great many dissatisfaction from the public and negative judgement resources which appear mainly as explicit propriety meaning,implicit tenacity and capability meaning.But to this appraisal object the attitudinal resources in Global Times are mostly positive and explicit.To the appraiser"Hong Kong public/groups" Washington Post gives few evaluations.But Global Times differentiates the opposition groups from the ordinary Hong Kongers and employs mostly negative propriety meaning to appraise them;3)The American medium affirms the rationality of the protesters and criticizes China for intervention on Hong Kong.And the American medium thinks that it is China mainland’s unfair intervention that causes the protests.The Chinese medium denies the rationality of the protesters and China’s intervention on Hong Kong issues.And the Chinese medium considers that the Hong Kong protests are a series of violent incidents instigated and plotted by separatists colluded with western forces.