A Comparative Analysis Of Engagement Resources In The English News Reports Of Chinese Newspapers And American Newspapers

Appraisal Theory is a development of the interpersonal meaning in Systemic Functional Linguistics, concerning the evaluative resources in discourse. It is composed of three subsystems:Attitude, Graduation and Engagement. Engagement System focuses on the interaction or negotiation of various views and stances, and it plays a great role in evaluating issues, adopting stance and coordinating interpersonal relationship.Among various types of discourse, news discourse has been discussed by scholars in linguistic filed especially in discourse analysis field. News report is the most common style of news discourse. Recently, China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank has attracted people’s great attention. This study attempts to analyze English news reports from Chinese newspapers and American newspapers about AIIB (Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank) in terms of Engagement System. With the aid of linguistic analytical instrument—UAM Corpus Tool, this study employs both qualitative and quantitative approaches, aiming to explore the following two questions:(1) How are the engagement resources used in the English news reports from Chinese newspapers and American newspapers about AIIB?(2) What are the differences as well as similarities in the usage of engagement resources between the English news reports from Chinese newspapers and American newspapers about AIIB?Thirty-two English news reports about AIIB of 18098 words from People’s Daily and China Daily as well as twenty-eight of 18069 words from New York Times and The Washington Post are selected in this thesis. Then two corpora are created according to countries. At the very beginning, all the engagement resources are marked in two corpora with the aid of UAM Corpus Tool. Through the data analysis, we find that:Both the Chinese newspapers and the American newspapers resort to a lot of engagement resources. They use Dialogic Expansion to open up the dialogic space of alternative opinions. On the other hand, they also employ Dialogic Contraction to close down other alternatives. These engagement resources are adopted to get the goal of constructing interpersonal relationship with the readers.Chinese newspapers and American newspapers share some similarities as they used engagement resources. Both of them prefer Dialogic Expansion. In Dialogic Contraction, both of them tend to employ more Disclaim value than Proclaim value. Within Proclaim sub-type, both of them employ Pronounce value most. Within Attribute sub-type, both of them employ more Acknowledge value than Distance value. Besides, there are quite a few differences between Chinese newspapers and American newspapers. In Dialogic Contraction, American newspapers reporters tend to use more Deny value and Counter value while Chinese newspapers reporters prefer to use more Concur value, Endorse value and Affirm value as well as Concede value; in Dialogic Expansion, Chinese newspapers reporters are inclined to use more Entertain value while American newspapers reports prefer to use more Distance value.From the perspective of Appraisal Theory, this study attempts to make a comparative study of the engagement resources in the news reports of Chinese newspapers and American newspapers about AIIB, hoping to enrich the linguistic study of news discourse analysis, thus offering pedagogical implications to the writing and reading of news discourse.