| My thesis focuses on the analysis of official microblog discourses of institutions of higher learning from the perspective of Appraisal Theory. It is mainly composed of five chapters.The purpose of the study is to conclude appraisal strategies employed in official microblog discourse of institutions of higher learning. These strategies can guide us in how to write high-quality microblog discourse to attract more people’s attention. To achieve this goal, this study analyzes 150 sample microblogs. All those samples are randomly and objectively selected from official microblog discourses of twenty-two Chinese institutions of higher learning on sina Weibo, which are written by the same microblogger of their own official microblogs. And all those microblog discourses are created originally. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches are employed to analyze the data.The analysis of data indicates that Attitude accounts for 49.5%; Engagement occupies 28.3%; Graduation holds 22.2%. The substrategies of every appraisal strategy are presented respectively in the following: Affect 25.2% with positive affect 16.8% and negative affect 8.4%, Judgement 9.6% with positive judgement 6.8% and negative judgement 2.8%, Appreciation 14.7% with positive appreciation 12.5% and negative appreciation 2.2%; Proclaim 3%, Disclaim 11.7%, Entertain 7%, Attribute 6.6%; Focus0.3% and Force 21.9%. In conclusion, the writers of official microblog discourses of institutions of higher learning are inclined to employ attitude strategies to express their opinions and interact with the readers because they can use attitude strategy more easily to express their viewpoints. Dialogic expansion is as frequently used as dialogic contraction since the disadvantages of using only one of them can be impaired by employing both of them. Graduation strategy is applied least frequently because it is subordinated to attitude strategy and engagement strategy, without which it cannot be employed independently. |
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