| This thesis devotes to analyzing the dialogicality in English hard news texts atthe level of discourse semantics. Naturally, the whole study will be concentrated on“dialogicality” and “English hard news”.According to Bakhtin’s Theory of Dialogue, in addition to verbal communication,the indirect and non-verbal interaction and even all human activities are dialogic innature. Dialogicality, a term closely related with dialogue, refers to certain propertiesof the subject matter of human being and cultural sciences and also involves with anessential attribute of discourse. As a very important subcategory of news discourse,English hard news is endowed with straight “factual” writing style and possesses thecharacteristics of timeliness, abruptness and destructiveness, which is distinguishablefrom the entertainment-oriented soft news. The unique features of English hard newsjustify its being selected as the object of study here and make its exploration ofdialogicality as the most representative one among the news field. The analysis ofdialogicality in English hard news discourse is represented as examining the way toconduct a dialogue between the authorial voice from the news writer and thealternative voices from “others”.For theoretical foundation, this thesis relies on the significant thoughts ofBakhtin’s Theory of Dialogue and draws upon the Systemic Functional Grammar andthe Appraisal Theory, especially the Engagement system of appraisal value, whichprovides the analytical framework for analyzing the linguistic resources and languagestrategies to realize dialogicality in English hard news discourse. Under Engagementsystem, the heteroglossic resources are divided into two broad categories according towhether they are “dialogically expansive” or “dialogically contractive” in theirintersubjective functionality, and each category has its own sub-options, which pavesthe way to conduct an in-depth and comprehensive exploration of dialogicality inEnglish hard news texts.Samples for analysis are five news texts on the issue of territorial dispute overthe Diaoyu Islands collected from the Voice of America. With the help of theanalytical framework of Engagement system, the study begins with distinguishing the authorial voice from the alternatives by exploring the linguistic resources with attitudemeaning in bare assertions and news headlines and follows with exploring all thelinguistic formulations in the five sample texts, by which the viewpoints, attitudes orvalues of “others” are represented and negotiated with the textual stance. Then, theselinguistic resources in dialogic nature will be categorized into the sub-options ofEngagement system according and analyzed how the alternative voices arerepresented, quoted and negotiated with the textual voice respectively with a purposeto dig out the intention behind. The consequence of analysis shows that the Englishhard news texts display a high level of dialogicality in nature and the coexistence ofthe heterogeneous voices make the news texts represented as an “objective”production. However, the news writer manages to employ abundant linguisticresources and rhetoric strategies to make the alternative voices serve for the textualvoice and thus influence the actual or potential readers’ viewpoints and understanding,which indicates that the news reporting is not so “objective” as superficiallyrepresented but ideologically-oriented.With the exploration of dialogicality in English hard news discourse under theframework of Engagement system, the study intends to inquire into the ideologicalmeaning in the hard news discourse, which will enrich the application of AppraisalTheory and provide a new research perspective for the critical study of newsdiscourse. In addition, it will help news readers to improve their sensitive ability toideological meaning implicated by dialogicality in hard news discourse. |
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