A Study Of Evidentiality In English Political News

Nowadays, political affairs attract more and more attention in the world. Thus, the news about these political affairs is playing an increasingly important role in general public's daily life. It is agreed that political news has become an indispensable part in the society.This thesis, under the theoretical foundation of the theory of evidentiality, especially Hu Zhuanglin's classification of evidentiality, intends to make an analysis of the distribution, frequency and function of each subtype of evidentials in the news reports about a typical political affair---the territorial dispute about Diaoyu islands between Japan and China. The research result shows that the hearsay evidential ranks the first with 131 times and accounts for 38.53%。The lexical coding of evidential markers in the corpus will also be studied from word and phrase level. Then the metafunctions of evidentiality will also be discussed in terms of three aspects: the ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function. Then political functions of evidentiality in English political news will also be discussed.Through the analysis of the political news of Diaoyu islands, this thesis displays that the distribution of each subtype of evidential markers has close relation with the features of English political news. Evidentiality still has connection with some political factors, such as the political stance, political fuzziness and political correctness.The study of evidentiality in English political news improves our consciousness of the evidential theory and lays a foundation for better understanding and use of English political news.