On Debates Of American Presidential Election In 2004-From The Perspective Of Appraisal Theory

As a unique political discourse, American presidential debates are important events in American election campaign, in which the candidates intend to conjure up the desired mental images and set up the solidarity with them so as to win voter preference. Among them, 2004 televised presidential debates between Bush and Kerry is special since there is no evidence to show result that one candidate is preferred by the voters over the other. The two candidates employ every means to acclaim, defend and attack. They acclaim their own accomplishments, positive policy stances or desirable character. Meanwhile, they attack their opponents on the basis of undesirable qualities or policy stances as well as refute those criticisms with defenses. Therefore, by dint of Appraisal resources, the candidates build their images and serve their purpose well in the debates.Appraisal theory, which is first proposed by Martin in the early 1990s, is an extension of interpersonal meaning in systemic functional linguistics. This theory is concerned with the linguistic resources by which texts or speakers come to express, negotiate and naturalize particular inter-subjective and ultimately ideological positions. On the basis of systemic functional linguistics, the theory is also absorbed Bakhtin's heteroglossia as its ingredient. Within this broad scope, the theory is concerned more particularly with the language of evaluation, attitude and emotion. Appraisal theory is regionalized as three interacting domains, namely, Attitude, Engagement and Graduation. The research indicates that the Appraisal theory is of great practical value. It can efficiently aid to explore the Appraisal resources in the language and make clear the language user's attitude, viewpoint and standpoint systemically and eventually achieve the persuasive effect. But there is no one research which has applied this theory to these debates so far.The present thesis sets out to explore the features of Appraisal resources in 2004 American televised presidential debates. A statistical analysis is adopted in this thesis to complement qualitative description in the hope of the achievement of a more objective conclusion in American presidential debates. With a computerized text analysis program—Systemic Coder 4.68, the numbers and frequencies of each type of Appraisal values will be ascertained in each debate in terms of the Appraisal scheme revised by the author. On the basis of the three sub-types of Appraisal System analysis, we divide the data into three parts and then analyze them one by one.After detailed qualitative analysis, five primary conclusions are drawn as follows: 1) The Attitude resources are the most favorite category among Appraisal theory in the presidential debates. With Affect, they arouse the experiential feeling from the audience; with Judgement, they evaluate the matters according to social criteria; they also insinuate their own aesthetic values into the minds of the audience by means of Appreciation. 2) Positive Attitude is overwhelmingly utilized by both candidates to acclaim their past deeds, future plans and their own personalities, while negative Attitude is used to attack their opponents. A detailed analysis and study demonstrate that Bush employs more positive Attitudes than Kerry does in the debates. And these positive Attitudes help Bush establish his distinctiveness.3) In the model of Engagement, the contraction, especially the resources of Disclaim, is extensively adopted. It helps the candidates to present the definite viewpoint and their determination to lead the United States of America to a safer and richer land. Moreover, these resources fit in with the requirements of candidates' attacks and defenses.4) The Force resources abound in the presidential debates. What's more, the extensive adoption of Raising and Sharpening enforces the candidates' viewpoint, enhances the power of persuasion of the language they use, and finally wins support from the voters. 5) Repetition and parallelism in Up-scaling Intensification are employed by the candidates frequently, which makes candidates' attitudes evident and firm, and their tones forceful. They have the effect of exciting voters' emotion and leading voters' political tendency. They are also efficient ways to win over the voters.Therefore, this thesis proves that Appraisal theory is an efficient tool to analyze the stance of the speaker or writer, helps listeners or readers to understand discourses deeply, and digs up the means of persuasion. Meanwhile, it offers a unique insight into reading political discourses.