Positive Discourse Analysis Of News Reports On "Double Reduction" Policy From The Perspective Of Appraisal Theory

Education plays an indispensable role in the development of a country and has always caught great attention among the general public.On July 24,2021,“double reduction” policy(DRP)was jointly issued by the general offices of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council,aiming to alleviate the burden of excessive homework coupled with off-campus tuition imposed on students in primary and secondary schools.Despite many studies on DRP,study on news reports on DRP from the perspective of Appraisal Theory is untouched.Therefore,the current study selects 53 pieces of news reports from China Daily,Global Times and Xinhuanet as material,intending to conduct PDA of news reports on DRP.The study tries to reveal the types as well as distribution characteristics of appraisal resources on the current news reports,and to plumb how social media convey their positive attitudes towards DRP via appraisal resources in order to achieve resonance with the readers.The current study attempts to answer three questions:(1)What appraisal resources are employed in the news reports on DRP?(2)How are these appraisal resources distributed in the news reports on DRP?(3)What are the positive meanings conveyed by appraisal resources in the news reports on DRP?Both quantitative method and qualitative method are adopted in the study,with the former manifesting the distribution of appraisal resources and the latter analyzing the positive meanings conveyed via appraisal resources.By dint of manual annotation in UAM Corpus Tool 6,it could be found that the appraisal resources are abundant in the current news reports.The distribution of attitude,engagement and graduation resources is uneven,among which engagement resources takes the lead,followed by attitude resources,and graduation resources occurs least frequently.Additionally,different appraisal resources boast different functions capable of conveying different positive meanings.When it comes to attitude resources,affect resources show the increasing acceptance of DRP among the general public.Judgement resources demonstrate the policy’s capacity to create the present and future benefits,providing confidence and dispelling qualms about the policy especially in its early phase.Appreciation resources provide people’s assessment on policy,harboring the idea that policy plays a pivotal role in burden reduction and quality promotion.As regards the engagement resources,disclaim resources highlight the big changes after the implementation of the policy and display dissatisfaction on prior educational equality or academic burden.Proclaim resources manifest the objectivity and persuasiveness of news reports via quoting data or survey.Likewise,the harness of entertain resources and acknowledge resources strengthen authenticity and objectivity of the benefits and degree of satisfaction with DRP.Withe respect to graduation resources,quantification resources reveals the policy has achieved intended results and the unprecedented determination.Intensification resources reflect the efficiency of remedying the current situation encompassing homework,off-campus tutoring,educational equality by the DRP.To sum up,not only does PDA of news reports on DRP based on Appraisal Theory complement the study on DRP in a linguistic way,but also it can help people grasp the connotation and essence of DRP,boasting confidence and dispelling misgiving.