A Study On The Interpersonal Meaning Of Chinese And West Official Report

Government Work Report (GWR) is a political speech delivered by Premier of theState Council at the National People’s Congress. State of the Union Address (SUA) is apolitical speech delivered by American President to the Congress. The content of the speech isgenerally the same as GWR. Both of them belong to political discourse. Addressers alwaysestablish, maintain and strengthen the interpersonal relationship with audience by consciouslyapplying appraisal resources, in order to win the support of audience. Therefore, both of themcan present abundant interpersonal meaning such as in the aspects of talking stand, illustratingpoints, declaring decisions and rousing people.Appraisal theory is a system of semantic resources, a development of SystemicFunctional Linguistics (SFL) and an extension of categories of linguistic resources employedto realize the interpersonal meaning. Appraisal theory involves three sub-systems: Attitude,Engagement and Graduation. And each sub-system has its own branches. It can efficientlyexplore appraisal resources in language and reveal how people use language to makeevaluation, declare their attitudes and coordinate relationship with others, etc.The thesis explores the interpersonal meaning of GWR and SUA of2012within theframework of Australian linguist Martin’s Appraisal Theory on the basis of quantitative andqualitative analysis. It aims to explore the distribution of different appraisal resources inGWR and SUA to illustrate how speakers achieve their objectives. After analyzing thesematerials, the research reveals the following findings.1) In the GWR, the sub-systems are ranked respectively Engagement, Attitude, andGraduate; while in the SUA, the order of distribution is Attitude, Engagement, and Graduate.2) Among attitudinal resources, appreciative resources account for the largest proportionin the GWR. Judgmental resources occupy the second largest proportion. Affective resourcestake up the lowest proportion. In the SUA, the order of distribution is Appreciative resources, Judgmental resources and Affective resources.3) The distributions of sub-systems of Engagement in the GWR show that Expansionresources occupy the overwhelming position. Modality takes up the largest part in theExpansion resources. The Contraction resources have low frequency of occurrence. However,the distributions are reverse in the SUA. The order is as following: the Expansion resourcesand the Contraction resources.4) As for Graduation resources, there is a great different between GWR and SUA. In theGWR, the distributions between the Force resources and the Focus resources are not differentsharply. While in the SUA, the difference is sharp.After analyzing the distributions of the Appraisal resources in the GWR and SUA, it isobvious that both are government reports, but the Appraisal types are less in GWR than that inSUA. We need to apply various Appraisal types to better realize the interpersonal meaning toclose the distance between our government and the people. And in daily life, everyone needsto appropriately use the Appraisal types to establish a harmonious relationship.