A Comparative Study Of Engagement Resources In Chinese And American Foreign Press Conferences

Foreign press conference is a significant medium for the government to releaseinformation about national and international issues and influence the public voice. It isthe combination of journalists’ questions and the spokesperson’s responses. Thespokesperson represents the government to release information, and journalistsrepresent the media to get valuable information. Previous studies of foreign pressconferences are made mainly from the perspective of Pragmatics, Stylistics,Interpreting Strategy, Journalism, Politics and so on, but research on foreign pressconferences in the guidance of Appraisal Theory is thin on the ground. In this thesis,the author attempts to make a comparative analysis of Chinese and American foreignpress conferences from the perspective of engagement system.The theoretical framework of this study is the engagement system withinAppraisal Theory. Engagement system deals with the lexical and grammaticalresources by means of which the authorial voice engages itself with other voices andpositions in the dialogical context. The author selects altogether40transcripts offoreign press conferences as the research data to make comparisons between Chineseand American foreign press conferences from the perspective of engagement system.There are both some similarities and differences between Chinese ForeignMinistry Spokespersons’ Regular Press Conferences and U.S. Daily Press Briefings inthe distributions of the engagement resources. Both Chinese and Americanspokespersons tend to employ more ‘contract’ resources than ‘expand’ resources toexpress the standpoints of the government, inhibit the spreading of rumors and guidethe public voice. However, within the ‘contract’ system,‘proclaim’ resources faroutweigh ‘disclaim’ resources in Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokespersons’ RegularPress Conferences, while in U.S. Daily Press Briefings the amount of ‘disclaim’resources is just a little more than that of ‘proclaim’ resources. Because of the inherentcharacteristics of foreign press conferences and the operating mechanism ofengagement system itself, there are some similarities in the employment ofengagement resources between Chinese and American foreign press conferences. Andthe different cultural backgrounds, thinking patterns and diplomatic policies lead tothe differences in the employment of engagement resources by Chinese and Americanspokespersons. This thesis provides a new perspective for the study of foreign press conferences,broadens the horizon of the engagement system, and offers a further understanding ofChinese and American foreign press conferences to help fully comprehendinstitutional interaction.