A Study Of Attitudinal Resources In China Section Of The Economist

Based on the Attitude system of Appraisal Theory, the current paper studies theattitudinal resources in the China section of The Economist. Appraisal Theory has beenapplied to study many kinds of genres, while columns have been seldom studied. Columnsrefer to the type of news reporting which comprehensively focus on a certain subject.Therefore, the attitude of the newspaper towards the certain subject can be concluded fromit. Moreover, with the rise of China, western media tend to take an open-minded attitude,instead of just criticizing. The news reports under such attitude are worth studying.Therefore, the present paper studies the China section. From the study of the attitudinalresources in it, the ways in which the newspaper makes the readers accept its attitudetowards China can be revealed.Appraisal Theory, further developing the interpersonal function of SystemicFunctional Grammar, aims at constructing the interpersonal system at the level ofdiscourse of semantics. Its three subsystems examine the expressing of attitude fromdifferent perspectives. Affect refers to the emotional expressions of the writer from thepsychological perspective. Judgment refers to the judgments of the writer on peoples’behaviors and characters from the ethical perspective, which, therefore, is influenced bythe cultures and values. Appreciation refers to the writer’s judgments on the values of thethings from the aesthetic perspective. When analyzing the text within the framework ofAppraisal Theory, both the readers’ understanding of the appraisal resources and thewriter’s negotiating with the readers should be paid attention to.Hence, combining the qualitative and quantitative analysis, the current paperinvestigates the attitudinal resources in the30news reports in China section of TheEconomist. The content of the research includes the following:1) the distribution featuresof the attitudinal resources in the China section of The Economist;2) the realizations ofthe attitudinal resources;3) the ways by which the writers negotiate with the readers andexpress the attitudes;4) the connection between the employment of appraisal resourcesand the social cultural content.According to the statistics, in the China section of The Economist:(1) Three sub-categories of appraisal resources distribute unevenly. In all kinds of reports, moreJudgment and Appreciation resources are employed, with least use of Affect resources,which accords with the objectivity of the news reports.(2) The evaluative resources aremainly realized on the ranks of lexis, including adjectives, adverbs, verbs, norms, andclauses. Most clauses are ironic, implicitly delivering the negative attitudes whenevaluating.(3) As for Affect resources, the writers impress more on the readers by thefrequent usage of explicit negative Affect resources and then shun the responsibility ofevaluating through the usage of non-authorial resources.(4) As to Judgment resources, thewriters tend to explicitly present the positive evaluations and implicitly express thenegative evaluations, from which the readers can make judgments by themselves.(5) Onthe aspect of Appreciation resources, due to the low subjectivity of Appreciation resources,the writers tend to employ more explicit resources.(6) The distribution and employmentof the attitudinal resources are influenced by the social cultural context, like theinternational status of China, and subject matters.Based on Appraisal Theory, this thesis analyzes the attitudinal resources in the newsreports of the China section and discusses how the writers negotiate with the readers, witha view to bringing new light to application of Appraisal Theory in the analysis of thecolumns. Besides, the paper is expected to offer some pedagogical instructions on theinteractive function of appraisal resources when student read and write news discourse.