Positive Discourse Analysis Of Attitudinal Resources In President Xi And President Obama's Diplomatic Discourse

Diplomatic discourse, as a kind of political discourse, is one of the research hot spots in discourse analysis. In previous studies, researchers preferred to conduct critical discourse analysis of political discourse, aiming at exposing the hidden ideology and power relations. This study acts differently. With appraisal theory as the analytical framework, PDA(positive discourse analysis) as the fresh perspective, this research is intended to make a contrastive study on the employment of attitudinal resources in President Xi and President Obama's diplomatic discourse and to see what causes politicians to resort to the use of such discourses as well as to mine the positive energy between the lines. This will help readers to get a better understanding of diplomatic discourses and to build up active attitude towards varied diplomatic and political issues.In the current world, political and economic situation is evolving. �Summit diplomacy� and �charm diplomacy� are playing increasingly important roles on world diplomatic arena. Diplomatic discourses from the leaders of world powers contain abundant information, thus analyzing their diplomatic discourses will help us to get a better understanding of the diplomatic stances that world powers hold and current situation, and meanwhile, we can learn the language arts and the art of leadership of the two Presidents as well as sense the power of language in changing and constructing our world. In order to see how the use of positive attitudinal resources in President Xi and President Obama's diplomatic discourses contributes to successful diplomacy and their positive role in the construction of a better world, this study will attempt to answer three research questions: 1) What attitudinal resources are employed by President Xi and President Obama in their diplomatic speeches? 2) What are the distribution features of attitudinal resources in President Xi and President Obama's diplomatic discourse?How do attitudinal resources help to realize communication purpose thus accomplishing successful diplomacy? 3) How attitudinal resources employed by President Xi and President Obama embody positive discourse?Around the research questions, through quantitative and qualitative analysis of 15 pieces diplomatic speeches or remarks from President Xi and President Obama respectively, the study mainly reveals the following findings:1) First, both President Xi and President Obama have employed all the sub-categories of attitude system in their chosen speeches, namely, Affect, Judgement and Appreciation. This shows that evaluative attitude resources are abundant in diplomatic discourses, and they are usually adopted to express politeness, to convey standpoints and to evaluate other parties involved. Moreover, they also touch upon hot spots like counter-terrorism, climate change and cooperation and development concerning the stability and prosperity of the whole international community.2) In some aspects, attitudinal resources are wielded in similar ways. For example, both Presidents prefer the use of inclination resources which imply their vigorous diplomatic stance for they zealously seek cooperation and joint development.3) The sub-systems of attitude also distribute differently in the two Presidents diplomatic discourses. For example, President Xi employs a larger proportion of appreciation to express our admiration of other nations' customs and social economic development, which demonstrates the inclusiveness of our culture. Moreover, President Obama uses more negative social sanction resources to condemn terrorism. Through the different distribution of the sub-systems of attitude, we can learn the cultural differences between China and the US in some aspects and also we can get an insight into the different diplomatic concerns of world powers.4) Last but not least, both President Xi and President Obama adopt much more positive attitudinal resources than negative ones. They convey positive views towards diplomatic relations and current situations. Positive attitudinal evaluations help the two Presidents realize communicative purposes and achieve successful diplomacy. At the same time, positive attitudinal evaluations inspire our pursuit for �All Good Things� and build a beautiful vision for human society as a whole. And they spread positive diplomatic energy which is conducive to construct a better human society.As positive discourse analysis of evaluative attitudinal resources in President Xi and President Obama's diplomatic discourse, this study on one side contributes to extend the application of appraisal theory in analyzing discourses, on the other side, this study can be seen as an effort towards �peaceful linguistics� that Martin advocates. After CDA deconstructs a world which is not good in many respects, PDA functions to construct a more ideal world. Meanwhile, this study will help us to comprehend diplomatic discourses more comprehensively and to gain positive energy to support our career forward.