A Corpus-based Study Of Graduation Resources In Tourism English

Appraisal Theory, which rose in the early1990s, is an extension of the interpersonal function in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). It concerns the attitudes negotiated in discourse, the strength of the feelings involved and how values are expressed and readers aligned. This theory consists of three subsystems, i.e. Attitude, Engagement and Graduation; Graduation is used to investigate how attitudinal meanings can be increased or decreased in terms of their orientation or specificity. Set in the framework of Graduation system, this thesis studies the employment of Graduation resources in English tourism texts, aiming at finding the characteristics of grading evaluative meanings in tourism discourse, so as to leverage its promotional effects. Based on the self-made Corpus of Tourism English (CTE), this study is conducted by combining quantitative analysis with qualitative discussions.The results indicate that, of the two sets of resources for Graduation, there are overwhelmingly more resources for Force than for Focus in tourism English. This suggests that English tourism texts tend to scale the degree or amount of the attitudinal meanings. Further study shows that more Intensification resources are employed than Quantification resources within Force, which suggests that writers of English tourism texts prefer assessing the degree of intensity in order to impress their target readers. Most of these Intensification resources are applied to grading qualities. On the other hand, though not prominent in tourism English, Quantification resources are mainly used to scale extent in space, mass and presence. We also notice that in tourism English upscaling is more prominent than downscaling. Through turning up the volume of the intensity, the amount and the extent, the promotional effects of tourism texts could be enhance. As to the use of the Focus resources, tourism English tends to use more sharpening wording than softening wording, though both sharpening and softening functions to leverage the promotion effects.This thesis reveals the characteristics and the rules of how Graduation resources are employed in English tourism texts, which has certain meanings in the effective writing of tourism English and the translation of Chinese tourism texts. However, due to the complexity of Graduation system within Appraisal Theory and the limitations such as the corpus scale, further studies on this subject need to be done in the future.