Appraisal Analysis Of Quotations In News On Obama’s Visit To China In U.S. Broadsheets

Quotation is a reference to those paraphrased or quoted words said by the speaker in thepast context to achieve the particular communicative intention. In this process, the role of thereporter has changed from the original recipient to the present speaker; the context of thediscourse has also changed, so has the communicative intention. When references are quoteddifferently according to the reporter’s different views, positions and attitudes, the differentchosen forms help to rebuild the new facts.In the News Discourse, inserting words by the person being interviewed or by the relatedpeople, especially by the well-known public authority is an important part of news coverage,and it is not only the implicit evaluation force, but also one way to improve the objectivity ofthe news report and make it more convincing. Quotation in the news discourse shows thecontents which have news value from others’ mouths, just for this, it is most easily givenideology by the reporter; the reporter in news reports can distort the fact by using quotations,however, the degree of distortion may be different, and the communicative intention may bedifferent, too. Because of this, quotation by the reporter passes the sound of power in a covertform so as to achieve the purpose of manipulating the words quoted.Van Dijk stated that quotation or quasi-quotation is closer to the truth, by which you canmake the report more vivid and more reliable; meanwhile quoting can protect reporters frombeing suspected. The domestic research scholar, Xin Bin, took the view that applyingquotations is a means of manipulating audiences’ awareness of the news media; the newsdiscourse in speech reporting seems objective and fair, in fact, reporters often intervene invarious ways, consciously or unconsciously influencing the readers’ understanding.Martin has emphasized the importance of Appraisal Theory in expressing the attitude andjudgment resources. Appraisal Theory, inspired by intertextuality theory, put resources intoEngagement system, as the way to express Attitude meaning. Intertextuality, as one of theimportant concepts in Critical Discourse Analysis, refers to the interaction between differentvoices in the discourse. The relationship between one discourse and another can help thelinguistic analysts analyze and appraise the structure, function, meaning and value of thewhole discourse. Intertextuality is the important theoretical link connecting discourse andsociety in real discourse studies. In this thesis, quotation is viewed as the implicit resource toexpress the Attitude meaning. This thesis studies the appraisal strength of quotation cited innews reports, that is to say, it studies how news discourse expresses its position through pretext of others.The corpus sources for this thesis are21pieces of news reports from the Los AngelesTimes, the New York Times and the Washington Post, whose reports being related to PresidentObama’s first visit to China. Under Martin’s theoretical framework, this thesis analyzes thequotation’s Attitudinal meaning from the perspective of intertextuality. Through generalappraisal analysis of news reports, Direct Speech and Indirect Speech, Quotation Sources,Reporting Verbs, especially through analyzing the Attitude resources in detail.Through the appraisal analysis of quotations in the news reports, this thesis mainly hasthe following findings:1. the three major newspapers have quoted many quotations including116direct speeches,62indirect speeches. Quotations not only take the role of improving theobjectivity of news reporting, but also take the role of expressing the reporter’s individualhidden attitudes and positions so as to make the public approve of his views on Obama’s visit;2As for the three attitudinal categories, Judgment takes up the largest proportion,Appreciation in between, and Affect the least. The three major newspapers are thus drawn toavoid excessive using of subjective factors by Affect which bears too many emotionalresources, but more inclined to use Judgment resources;3Among the21newspaper reports,quotation resources from the U.S. account to115, and there are53Chinese sources, so thereporter protects the interest of the United States rather than China by giving more support tothe USA.