A Positive Discourse Analysis Of Wen’s Speech In The Perspective Of Appraisal Theor

This thesis applies the Appraisal Theory to analyze the political speech from theperspective of positive discourse analysis. The sample speech is one which wasdelivered by Premier Wen Jiabao at the summit forum of the Expo2010, Shanghai,China. Martin claims that the Appraisal Theory is in fact a complement and expansionof interpersonal function in Haliday’s Systematic Functional Grammar. theAppraisal Theory mainly analyzes the attitude, viewpoint, stand revealed in theappraisal resources. Compared with critical discourse analysis, positive discourseanalysis can be considered as supplementary perspective to analyze discourse.Positive discourse analysis takes a text as a social practice which bears the sociallyconstructional function. It advocates rather a positive reform and peaceful solution tosocial issues than an inappropriate exaggeration of ideology or power relationshiprevealed in the discourse. Fairclough’s three-dimensional model offers a sociologicalperspective to analyze a discourse by putting its text in a larger social background.This is helpful to analyze the appraisal resources in the text more accurately. Thisthesis will analyze the appraisal resources in the sample speech and draw a conclusionthat the choice of different categories of appraisal resources is closely related to theaddresser’s attitude and the social background of the discourse. This thesis willinvestigate the positive function caused by the three sub-systems of appraisal resource:affect, engagement and graduation in Wen Jiabao’s speech. Fairclough’sthree-dimensional model is also employed to explain these appraisal resources fromsociological perspective.