Different Attitudes In News Commentaries Of The Same Political Issue

This thesis focuses on the study of different attitudes of news commentaries on the same political issue, aspiring to investigate the linguistic realization and embodiment of these attitudinal meanings in English news commentaries. It aims at uncovering the commentary writers'linguistic strategies and deployment in fulfilling the argumentative function and communicative purposes of news commentaries, shedding some light on the underlying interpersonal meanings between different attitudes.The theoretical framework adopted in the thesis is Martin's Appraisal, which has been tested to be a highly applicable and well-systemized tool in attitude and evaluation analysis. Following its guidance, the present study conducted a coding-oriented analysis to deal with the three systems of Appraisal, Attitude, Engagement and Graduation, each with more delicate sub-categories as the sources of current parameters in coding. In the detailed analysis section, the distributions of evaluative resources and their frequencies in discourse are clarified. Typical extracts infused with different attitudinal meanings are selected and linguistically accounted for, so as to figure out the authors'intensions and the implied interpersonal meanings. Based on the above steps of investigation, the following major findings of the present study are naturally drawn:Firstly, different attitudes in political news commentaries can be realized in different attitudinal subtypes and with a wide range of linguistic resources such as explicit evaluative lexis and implicit ideational choices, which is closed related with the authors'identities and their standpoints in the issue.Secondly, in news commentaries, the authors adopt different heteroglossia resources, either projection, modality or concession to manipulate their engagement and de-engagement to certain attitudes, which leads to their voicing responsibilities either committed or shrunk. Lastly, attitudes in news commentaries are gradable, which are realized by more force resources and less focus resources, indicating the authors'strong and scathing wording in both claiming their stances and attack others'attitudes.With the above findings, this study extends the application of Appraisal in the specific genre of news commentaries, to which it concludes some prominent attitudinal features and contributes semantic elaborations. It is hoped that by reflecting upon the communicative strategies and linguistic employment in news commentary discourse, the present study will be helpful in developing people's critical thinking and practical skills in argumentative writing as well.