Analysis Of Evaluative Language In American Government Reports On China

China, as a socialist country, with significant economic achievements after the past three-decades market reforms and opening, has now been seen as one of the ideological factors of instability and a potential rival by the U.S. which is regarded as the most powerful country in the world. This kind of evaluative attitudes is revealed in the language of U.S. government reports. The thesis chooses the U.S. Treasury Reports on China's economic and exchange rate policy as a case to research on the linguistic features of evaluative language in these government reports.Appraisal Theory, based on the systemic functional linguistic tradition, which extends the scope of the interpersonal meaning research in Systemic Functional Grammar is applied in the thesis. The thesis will carry out the analysis in line with three sub-systems in the Appraisal Theory--Attitude, Engagement, and Graduation--to summarize the linguistic features of evaluative language in the U.S. government reports, and then to reveal the language hegemony hidden in U.S. government reports.First of all, the thesis introduces the framework of Appraisal theory and previous study on the theory. Then the analysis of evaluative language in the selected U.S. Treasury reports on China's exchange rate policy is carried out. Through the analysis and study, the thesis comes to conclusion that evaluative language is a key aspect of ultimately ideological functionality and plays an important role in the government reports. The evaluative language in the U.S. government reports is under the influence of social, cultural, historical and political factors since the U.S. authority is inevitably influenced by ideologies and hence embodies ideological value while reporting.