An Appraisal Analysis Of Bush's Speeches On Iraq War

This thesis, based on the framework of the Appraisal Theory, is an attempt to explore the features of appraisal resources in English political speeches through the analysis of two speeches made by American president G. Bush on Iraq War.First, the thesis introduces the Appraisal Theory, especially the three subtypes of attitude system dealing with affect, judgment and appreciation. The main body of this thesis is concerned with the application of Appraisal Theory to the two speeches of Bush on Iraq War. Through the analysis of the sample speeches from the lexical, clausal, and discourse levels, the author finds that a great amount of quality adjectives, verbs, nouns, and modal adjuncts are widely used in the speeches, and that judgment, especially implicit judgment, is employed more often than appreciation and affect. The reasons for this phenomenon are analyzed in the thesis. Besides, comparative analysis shows that according to the changes of social context, the speaker employs different appraisal resources to express his stance and affect others' thought. Meanwhile, the changing reasons are analyzed from the critical linguistic perspective. The analysis reveals the influence of the western politicians' ideology on their speeches, and the close relation between the Appraisal Theory and ideology. The paper testifies that the Appraisal Theory is of great interpretation in discourse analysis.