A Positive Discourse Analysis Of The News Reports Of Social Vulnerable Groups From Appraisal Perspective

Positive discourse analysis (here in after PDA), which adopts a constructiveperspective, is the supplement to critical discourse analysis (here in after CDA).Instead of radically analyzing ideology and power relations in the utterances, PDAtries to promote the positive reform and put forward the solution in a peaceful way. Itaims to achieve the goal of “Peaceful Linguistics” and construct a harmonious andcompatible society. Appraisal Theory is the new development of Halliday’sSystematic Functional Linguistics, which is proposed by Martin and his colleagues onthe basis of the research of interpersonal meaning. It is mainly used to describe andexplain the viewpoint or attitude implied in the utterances through the analysis ofappraisal resources.This thesis attempts to make a PDA of the news reports of social vulnerablegroups (here in after SVG news reports) from a constructive perspective by adoptingAppraisal Theory. It aims to find out the positive role the attitude, engagement andgraduation resources play in rebuilding the media image of social vulnerable groups.Through the quantitative and qualitative study towards the data resources, theconclusions are drawn as follows. There are adequate appraisal resources in SVGnews reports, but the distributions of the three sub-systems are not balanced. Theattitudinal resources in the corpus occupy the primary proportion, accounting for40.5％, which are followed by graduation resources and engagement resources. InSVG news reports, the writers could not only express their own ideas, but also reflectthe vulnerable people’s inner thought, behavior and moral values. It helps to make thereaders have a better understanding about the social vulnerable groups and eliminatesome prejudices toward them. In the attitude system, the judgement resources is mostfrequently used, accounting for41.6％while the attitudinal resources is least used,accounting for26.5％. Avoiding using too much attitudinal resources could increasethe objectivity of the news reports. The judgement resources are mostly employed toexpress the tenacity of the vulnerable group. They reveal the fact that the vulnerablepeople always keep a positive and optimistic attitude toward difficulties, which helps to rebuild their media image. The proportion of appraisal resources is in the middle.They are mainly used to show the writer/speaker’s appreciation and praise toward thevulnerable people’s attitudes. In the engagement system, the proportion of dialogicexpansion outnumbers that of dialogic distraction. The great use of dialogicexpansion resources provides more chance for vulnerable groups to express theirfeelings and attitudes, which helps to protect their interests. In the graduation system,the proportion of force resources is much higher than that of focus resources. But theyhave the same purpose which is to reveal the writers’ putative intentions. All in all,the thesis tries to apply Appraisal Theory to make a PDA of SVG news reports,aiming to find out the relevance of PDA to the goal of constructing a harmonious andpositive society.