| Appraisal Theory, which is the new development of Systemic Functional Linguistics, develops out of interpersonal function within Halliday's systemic functional grammar and is mainly about lexis. It is concerned with how the speaker establishes his/her attitude in the discourse/text. As one of the semantic resources, Appraisal Theory consists of Attitude, Engagement and Graduation. Attitude system, which is the key of Appraisal Theory, is made up of three subcategories: Affect, Judgment and Appreciation.With the development of Appraisal Theory, it is gradually applied into different discourse analysis. This thesis studies disaster news and political news from the perspective of Attitude system in Appraisal Theory, trying to explore the distribution and preference of attitudinal resources and the differences and similarities between disaster news and political news.The data are: disaster news is from China Daily and political news from VOA. Based on the data, the thesis tentatively explores the distribution of attitudinal resources in the framework of Appraisal. We can know which kind of attitudinal resources are favored in disaster news and political news by making a contrastive analysis. We can know the distribution of Affect; Judgment and Appreciation both in disaster news and political news by quantitative analysis; and by qualitative analysis, further explanations are given respectively.The thesis is composed of five chapters. Chapter One is the introduction. Chapter Two is a brief literature review of the studies of news and the applications of Appraisal Theory, in addition, the definition of news, the characteristics of news and the reason of news as discourse are illustrated. Chapter Three is the theoretical framework of Appraisal Theory, whose three subsystems, especially Attitude system are explained in detail. Chapter Four is about the analysis of the data. The analysis of the distribution of attitudinal resources in disaster news and political news are listed as precisely as possible with the accurate explanations accordingly. We know that through the analysis of the statistics the differences and similarities between disaster news and political news. Chapter Five is the conclusion, in which the main findings, the limitations of the research and the implications on further development of Appraisal are given.The hypotheses of the thesis are: there are great differences about the distribution of Affect, Judgment and Appreciation in disaster news and political news. Disaster news prefers Appreciation, while political news prefers Judgment. The news writers favor negative attitude in disaster news, but in political news is positive attitude.The tentative research findings of attitudinal resources are as follows: First, both the distribution of Affect of the total attitudinal resources in disaster news and political news are the least, 14.5% and 11% respectively. Second, disaster news is far in favor of Appreciation, 65.5% of the total attitudinal resources, in which Negative Appreciation takes 41.9%, more than Positive Appreciation, that is to say, the news writers like to use much more Negative Appreciation. But political news is inclined to Judgment, 49.3% of the total attitudinal resources, especially Positive Judgment, which makes up 31.5%. Third, in disaster news Judgment takes the second position of the distribution of attitudinal resources, accounting for 20%, of which Negative Judgment takes 18.2%; whereas in political news Appreciation stands the second, taking 39.7% of the total attitudinal resources, of which Positive takes 31.5%. This means that disaster news has a preference of Negative Judgment to convey the author's feeling; political news intends to use Positive Appreciation towards human behavior and the objective world. Fourth, Negative Attitude 76.2% in disaster news is attached with more importance than Positive Attitude 23%, which indicates that disaster news favors Negative Attitude to report, catching the attention of the hearer's sympathy for the suffered and hatred for the disaster. But Positive Attitude 77.8% is the key in political news, which signifies that Positive Attitude is preferred.Based on Appraisal Theory, the thesis makes a tentative comparison of attitudinal resources between disaster news and political news. The results of the research can not only help the readers to grasp the main idea of disaster news and political news quickly, but also strengthen the application of Appraisal Theory in discourse analysis through the contrastive analysis between disaster news and political news and the conclusion of the differences and similarities of them. The research of the thesis provides a method for other discourses'evaluative resources study.
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