The Study Of The Language Of Evaluation In Chinese Government Work Report Of 2010

The annual Government Work Report (hereinafter referred to as"GWR") delivered to the People's Congress, reviewing the government performances and achievements of the previous years and putting forward the policies or plans of the coming years for politics, economy, people's life, education, etc, certainly presents an authoritative and formal source of information about the situation of China. It has become an important channel for the outside world to learn more about China. It is also an authoritative source of information about the government work and policies to the general Chinese public.Appraisal theory is put forward in the nineties of the twentieth century, it is a theory concerning evaluation. It is a recently developed framework for studying interpersonal meaning in the Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) (Li Zhanzi 2002). Appraisal theory is also called Appraisal system. This theory/system concentrates on the writer's or speaker's positive or negative attitude to persons, places, entities, events, phenomena and the ways in which the writer or speaker conveys his or her attitudes and positions (Wang Zhenhua 2001). In this thesis, we take the Appraisal theory as the framework to explore the distribution of its resources and the application of different evaluative devices to interpret how the speaker construes social relations with readers.At present, the research data of the Appraisal system always concerns the popular texts, such as news, political speech texts, casual talks and so forth, but rarely in the texts such as Chinese GWR. Most researches of Chinese GWR are from the perspective of translation, few analysis are put on this kind of discourse from the perspective of Appraisal theory and the research is far from being sufficient and systematical. This thesis attempts to analyze the 2010 Chinese GWR from the perspective of Appraisal theory to find out the language style and feature of Chinese GWR, and also to explore how the GWR objectively and precisely expresses the works of the government which is to encourage, inspire the nation's development in a positive way and make the whole nation be full of confidence so as to build a more and more promising future. Doing an appraisal analysis of the Chinese GWR can not only make us thoroughly understand the content, features of its language which is featured as formality, solemnity and authoritativeness to show the government's authority and credibility to the whole country; It can contribute to make us understand the policies, guide line and the spirit of the government easier and more precisely; which can help the whole nation smoothly carry out various policies and strengthen macro-control so as to positively promote economic development steadily and rapidly, but also can make a new add on discourse to prove the feasibility of Appraisal system.Through the discourse analysis of Chinese GWR by using Appraisal system as an analytical tool in all aspects. We can find out the language features of GWR and the government's authority and credibility to the whole nation, it expresses the central government's concern about people's livelihood and its strong resolution in facilitating transform and seeking happiness as well as esteem for the people of the nation, which can enhance the solidarity between the government and citizens so as to guide and unit the whole nation to develop in a positive way.The researches and discussions in the thesis will focus on the following questions:1. What are the lexico-grammatical features of the 2010 Chinese GWR? How are these features presented through the language of Chinese GWR in the perspective of the Appraisal theory?2. How can the government's authority and credibility be revealed by those lexico-grammatical features after discourse analysis?The thesis presents a discourse-analytical approach to the Chinese GWR. It utilizes the Appraisal theory as the rooted analytical tool and adopts qualitative study, choosing Chinese GWR of 2010 discourse samples which are selected from the authoritative and well-known website of the Central Government of the People's Republic of China: http://www.gov.cn/2010lh/ as the analyzing material. Firstly we make clear the lexico-grammatical features presented through the language of GWR in the perspective of the Appraisal theory, which can make us understand the policies, guide line and the spirit of the government easier and more precisely. Then we discuss the government's authority and credibility be revealed by those lexico-grammatical features after discourse analysis.Through the analysis, we can find out that:1. Among all the Attitude resources, Judgement resources enjoy the most number in the GWR, the second is Appreciation, and Affect is the least of all resources for the GWR is a formal and authentic document made by the central government, it may seldom expresses feelings but objectively use a large amount of evalutaion of behavior as well as many evaluations of situation and policies to show the government's authority and credibility. All the effort we made is to seek happiness and esteem for the people of our nation, which can strongly enhance the solidarity between the government and its people; most of the Attitude resources are positive so as to play an important role in abridging the interpersonal gap between the government and audiences.2. Under the heading of Engagement, Dialogistic Contraction enjoys the larger part than Dialogistic Expansion. By the use of Engagement resources strategically, the addresser successfully establishes social solidarity and aligns much more people into the community of shared values he proposed.3. Graduation resources appear a lot in the data, under which Force is used much more frequently than Focus, and the up-scaling resources are more than down-scaling resources. The speaker used Graduation resources to explicitly show his proposition and softening the underlying challenges of oppositions, so as to amplify the attitude and engagement, make his formulation clearer and achive the prupose of persuasion.Throughout the whole analysis, we find the feasibility of the genre of discourse under the framework of this approach. If time and space permitted, we can select more Chinese government work reports of different years, we may have a comparision between them so as to get the general features of evaluation meanings in this formal genre. And the interpersonal meaning can not only be realized from the perspective of Appraisal, but also can be explored by other theories comprehensively and thoroughly.