A Contrastive Analysis Of Appraisal Resources In Commencement Addresses By Political Leaders And Business Elites

As a farther development of Systemic Functional Linguistics, Appraisal Theory has witnessed the formation, development and prosperity. Based on the Appraisal System, the present study conducts a contrastive analysis of thirty commencement addresses (CAs) (15 delivered by political leaders and 15 by business elites), exploring how the political leaders and business elites adopt similar and different evaluative resources, as well as the reasons for these similarities and differences.It finds that the most striking resemblance is the general distribution of appraisal resources. Attitude enjoys the highest rate in both political leaders’commencement addresses (PCAs) and business elites’commencement addresses (BCAs), followed by engagement and graduation. In addition, CAs speakers tend to employ positive attitudinal evaluations. Social esteem outnumbers social sanction in both groups. At last, upgrading of force is favored not only in BCAs but in PCAs.In spite of the resemblances of general distribution, BCAs distinguish from PCAs in the following:Within affect, PCAs take larger percentage of un/happiness and smaller scale of in/security resources than those in BCAs. Social sanction is far more favored by PCAs. Within appreciation, the rate of reaction is higher in BCAs than that in PCAs, PCAs have higher occurrence of valuation. Less resources of deny and pronouncement in BCAs than in PCAs. PCAs employ more softening resources than BCAsThe present study lists several reasons that contribute to these differences. First, the different promotion systems between politicians and businessmen lead the different choice of appraisal resources. Furthermore, politicians have a great influence on the ideology of the whole country, making them frequently use deny and pronouncement to set standard for what is right or wrong. Finally, political leaders and party activists prefer using more abstract languages, which could answer why there exist more softening resources in PCAs than in BCAs.