| Evidentiality is a linguistic category. It began to attract linguists' attention in the early part of the 20th century, for example, Boas (1911), Sapir (1921), Swadesh (1939), Lee (1938, 1944, 1950, 1959). This initial stage of analysis mainly focuses on highly inflectional languages. Roman Jakobson (1957) first adopts the term "evidential." Ever since 1980s, the research on evidentiality has witnessed a dramatic progress with works done by various scholars such as Chafe and Nichols (1986), Saeed (1997), Mushin (2000, 2001), Palmer (2001), Aikhenvald and Dixon (2003) and Aikhenvald (2004). But the researches on highly inflectional languages outnumber those on less inflectional languages. Domestically, this topic has been studied by researchers such as Hu (1994a, 1994b, 1995), Zhang (1997), Yan (2000), Xu (2004), Niu (2005), Fang (2005, 2006), Zhu (2006) and etc. Domestic researches on this topic can be classified into four types: introduction, evidential analysis in Chinese, application and reanalysis of the nature of evidentiality. Meanwhile, discourse features of evidentiality have already begun to attract the attention of linguistic experts and researchers, such as Chafe (1986), Friedman (1986), Mushin (2000, 2001), Precht (2003) and Aikhenvald (2003, 2004). But the research in this area has just begun and is in urgent need of improvement and supplement, especially with regard to the studies focusing on the relationship between evidentiality and genres.The need for studying discourse features of English evidentiality in news reports is based upon the following four grounds: firstly, the evidential systems of highly inflectional languages are much better documented than those of English and consequently the studies of discourse features in English are outnumbered by those in other highly inflectional languages; secondly, the treatment of discourse features of evidentiality in the genre of news reporting is far from exhaustive; thirdly, the treatment of discourse features of evidentiality in the past is anything but systematic and they have not been treated under a comprehensive theoretical framework; and last but not least, the previous studies on discourse features of evidentiality seldom concentrate on the construction roles of evidentials in discourse, especially their role in the construction of ideology behind a certain genre.The reason for choosing news reports of epidemic situation update as research data is based upon the following two observations: firstly, reporters covering this news usually attach great importance to the information sources and when and how they will express their commitment to the factuality of the reported information. That is, they will take special care in news writing when it comes to evidentials. Secondly, the subtlety of the reported event presupposes a great deal of covert subconscious ideological negotiation and alignment between the reporters and the prospective readership. So news reports of epidemic situation update serve as a good specimen for studying discourse features of evidentiality and the ideology-naturalizing functions of evidentials.In this dissertation, the discourse features of evidentiality in news discourse will be approached from a dynamic perspective. There are three research tasks: firstly, to find out both the ideational and interpersonal discourse features of evidentiality in English news reports of epidemic situation update under the framework of systemic-functional linguistics; secondly, to shed light upon the constructive relationship between uses of evidentials and the ideology behind the news reports; and thirdly, to reveal the lexicogrammatical features of evidentiality in the genre of news reporting.Based upon the systemic-functional grammar established by Halliday (1985, 1994) and the genre theory formulated by Martin (1992), this dissertation will make a systematic analysis of the ideational and interpersonal discourse features of evidentiality in news reports of epidemic situation update as well as an in-depth examination into how these discourse features contribute to the realization of the ideology behind the news reports. Here the ideology is less concerned with the reporters' communicative intentions than with the way through which they realize the intentions. We maintain that the implicit naturalization of alignment is a major social function of news reports, which reflects the ideology imposed upon this genre. So the ultimate purpose of this analysis is to reveal how discourse features of evidentiality contribute to the implicit naturalization of alignment.We will concentrate on two major research questions in this dissertation:1. What are the ideational discourse features of evidentiality in English news reports of epidemic situation update?2. What are the interpersonal discourse features of evidentiality in English news reports of epidemic situation update?The first major question includes four minor ones:(a) What are the process features of the different evidentials?(b) What participant roles are realized through the different evidentials?(c) What deictic worlds are realized through the different evidentials and what rhetorical effects are realized through deictic shift?(d) How do the ideational discourse features of evidentiality contribute to naturalization of the communicative intentions in English news reports of epidemic situation update?And the second major question also comprises four minor ones: (a) How is knowledge reliability realized through evidentiality?(b) What is the relationship between evidentiality and modality?(c) What engagement features are realized through the different evidentials?(d) How do the interpersonal discourse features of evidentiality contribute to naturalization of the communicative intentions in English news reports of epidemic situation update?This paper will analyze 47 English epidemic news reports collected on the basis of certain criteria, within a mixed research design comprising both quantitative and qualitative analyses. The quantitative analysis aims at locating the general usage patterns of different evidentials and systemizing their respective discourse features. Then we will use the qualitative analysis to illustrate and illuminate the findings of the previous analysis and explain how these discourse features of evidentiality relate to the realization of ideology. We will focus on zero-marked, hearsay, quotative and inferential evidentials.We approach the ideational discourse features of evidentiality from three perspectives: transitive process, semantic roles played by both reporters and outside information sources and deictic worlds. It is found that the evidential features associated with the three aspects facilitate the construction of three power features: firstly, both material and discourse power are controlled by the outside information sources; secondly, both material and discourse power are controlled by the news reporters; and thirdly, the reporters are constructed as impartial and objective information providers. And the interpersonal discourse features of evidentiality are also approached from three perspectives: knowledge reliability, modality and engagement. It is found that these features contribute to the construction of three types of power relationships: firstly, certain uses of evidentials can improve the information reliability; secondly, some evidentials can raise the degrees of likelihood for the information to be a consensus; and thirdly, some evidentials can strengthen the authoritativeness of the supplied information.Theoretically, this dissertation further clarifies the nature of evidentiality, provides a systematic classification of discourse features of evidentiality based upon the framework of the systemic-functional grammar and offers insight into the relationship between evidentiality and ideology. Practically, it produces a workable and systematic research framework for the analysis of the discourse features of evidentiality in news reports, which can be adopted for future studies. And it also contributes to teaching readers how to read English news reports in a critical manner.
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