A Contrastive Study On Appraisal Resources In English And Chinese Editorials

The editorial belongs to the news genre, but it has been rarely cited as discourse in the discourse analysis of linguistics, rather as the discourse in journalism studies. The research of editorials as linguistic discourse was neglected until the final decade of the 20th century, and few attempts have been made to develop English and Chinese contrastive analysis. This thesis is undertaken to make a contrastive analysis of English and Chinese editorials from a systemic functional linguistic perspective.Martin and his colleagues proposed the Appraisal Theory (e.g. Martin 2000) in the early 1990s,which further developed the interpersonal metafunction theory of Halliday's systemic functional linguistics. With the further development of the Appraisal Theory, the research of Chinese discourse and the contrastive research between English and Chinese discourse within the framework of the Appraisal Theory have gradually become a new trend in the development of the Appraisal Theory. However, the domestic study of Chinese news editorial discourse within the Appraisal Theory framework is still rare. The contrastive study between English and Chinese editorial discourse in this framework is also rarely seen. This study evaluates the operability of the Appraisal Theory applied into Chinese editorials based on analysis and discussion, as well as provides a new perspective to the research of the editorial and the contrastive research of English and Chinese discourse.This thesis is conducted within the framework of the Appraisal Theory. The present study aims to analyze the distribution characteristics of appraisal resources in English and Chinese editorials, especially the contrastive analysis of engagement resources. The research of engagement resources are discussed from the perspective of monogloss and heterogloss,which includes dialogic contraction and dialogic expansion. The similarities and significant differences on appraisal meaning between English and Chinese discourse are summed up and reasons of the similarities and differences are presented. The editorial discourses under investigation are about"3.14"Tibet violence event from March 15,2008 to April 15, 2008. The study is based on a body of twenty editorials published in reputable English and Chinese newspapers, ten in English and ten in Chinese. This study combines descriptive methodology with interpretative methodology.The major findings are summed up as follows:Because Chinese editorial and English editorial belong to the same genre, they have much in common. Firstly, according to the Genre and Generic Structure Potential Theory of Hasan (see Halliday and Hasan 1985), both Chinese and English editorials can be divided into four parts according to the functions: headline of text,the first sentence of the text as the beginning,the central part as the main part and the last paragraph as the conclusion. Secondly, there are more negative resources than positive resources in both Chinese and English editorials. Thirdly, there are huge amounts of engagement resources in both English and Chinese editorials.Despite the similarities, there exist some differences between Chinese editorial and English editorial. First, attitude resources take up a larger part in Chinese than in English news editorials. Second, engagement resources amount to a larger part in English editorials than in Chinese editorials. Third, negative engagement accounts for a larger part in English than in Chinese editorials.This thesis is composed of five chapters. Chapter One presents the motivation of the research and introduces research methods. The organization of this thesis is also described in this chapter. Chapter Two introduces a literature review of editorials and then reviews the previous studies on editorials in relation to the theory of Appraisal. The structure of the news editorial is presented here. Chapter Three introduces the theoretical background of the research. The Appraisal Theory is described in detail at first. Then the thesis introduces the Engagement System. Chapter Four analyzes the appraisal resource and the engagement resource in English and Chinese news editorial discourses. In the Engagement System,the analysis is developed from the perspective of monogloss and heterogloss, which includes dialogic contraction and dialogic expansion. Chapter Five concludes the findings and implications of this thesis, and puts forward some advices for further studies.