Appraisal Analysis On The Contrast Of English And Chinese Financial Web News Commentary A Generic Perspective

Inspired by the genre theory of Hason and appraisal theory of Martin, more and morescholars have focused their study on many kinds of discourses based on genre andinterpersonal function. However, a new form of discourse, web news commentary, is seldomstudied from the aspect of genre and interpersonal function.The present study, based on the theories of appraisal and genre, by analyzing thesamples both Chinese and English financial web news commentaries, aimed at researching onthe differences and similarities in them between Chinese and English writers, and attemptswere made to probe into some of the affecting factors that are attributed to the differences,and tried to look into the generic structure potential of financial web news commentaries.Results of contrastive analysis between CFWNC and EFWNC indicate that there exitboth similarities and differences between them in the use of appraisal resources. The totalfrequencies in CFWNC and EFWNC in using appraisal resources are almost the same(1378:1363). The biggest difference between them lies in the use of Affect. It is not used bythe English writers, in contrast, the Chinese counterparts use it for21times. Results of furtheranalysis of Appreciation reveal that the Chinese writers use more often aesthetic appreciationbut less frequently unaesthetic appreciation than the English counterparts.In the analysis of Judgment, it can be found that although it seems that the Englishwriters are likely to use less frequently Judgment than the Chinese, the percentage it takes upis higher than that of the Chinese writers. Further analysis of the sub-types demonstrates inthe Chinese web news commentaries, social esteem is used almost twice as frequently as theEnglish (158:81). On the contrary, in the use of social sanction, the English writers adopt itfor356times, making up81.46%of the total, but the Chinese writers choose it for307timeswhich occupies only66.02%of the total. From the findings of analysis of the types ofEngagement, we can see in the four types between CFWNC and EFWNC that the biggestdifference lies in Proclaim both in total frequency (106:35) and in ratio (19.34%:6.31%).Difference also exists in frequency of Entertain between them (103:66). Findings of furtherobservation of types of Disclaim indicate that although the total frequencies of Disclaim are the same in both of them, there exits big differences in the two types. In CFWNC andEFWNC, the ratio of deny is56:76, and that of counter is87:67. In the observation ofAttribute, it is further noticed that there exists big difference both in frequency (7:14) andpercentage (7%:12.73%) in using distance between the Chinese and the English writers.The differences in using appraisal resource between the Chinese and English writersmight be attributed to their different writing styles and thought patterns influenced bycultures.Finally the generic structure potential of financial web news commentaries is looked into.It is found that the order of these elements is title^(backgounds of the financial issues)^thefinancial issues^writer’s standpoint^expounding^(related comments)^summary.