An Analysis Of Engagement Resources In English Editorials: An Appraisal Approach

Appraisal theory is the development of interpersonal meaning of Systemic Functional Linguistics. The theory is a new framework and comprises three subsystems: Attitude, Graduation and Engagement. The engagement system focuses on the interaction and negotiation of different opinions and stances, and it plays a positive role in evaluating issues, adopting stances, and managing interpersonal positions and relationships.Editorial makes comments on the current principal issues and presents the attitude of newspaper in order to influence and persuade the public, so it occupies an important place in newspaper. Within the engagement system, this thesis attempts to find out the characteristics of engagement resources in English editorials, explore the distribution features of engagement values in the introduction part, body part and conclusion part of editorials, and analyze how these values are used to negotiate and align with readers to achieve the writing purposes.Both qualitative and quantitative analytical methods are adopted to study the 20 editorials from American two authoritative newspapers—The Washington Post and The New York Times. Through the data analysis, we find that the editorial writers have a preference for disclaim (44.3%) and entertain (34.2%) resources, and other engagement resources are comparatively less employed. Secondly, there are also significant differences in each part of editorials discourse and the distribution feature is beneficial to serve the writing purpose of each part. Moreover, the above features are closely related with the register of editorial discourse.This thesis employs the Appraisal Theory to explore the characteristics of engagement values in English editorials and provides a new theoretical perspective for the study of interpersonal meaning, and offers a tentative model for engagement study on other types discourse. What's more, it offers pedagogical implications for students to realize the interactive role of Appraisal in the process of reading and writing.