| The analysis of discourse is becoming popular with scholars in recent decades,and appears the trends of multiple perspectives and inter-discipline.News discourse has an extensive influence on our daily life and plays an indispensable role in the information transmission and public opinions.Evidentiality has widespread sources of informing action,which makes different voices participate in discourse communication.The information influences and infiltrates into each other.Evidentiality plays an important part in the analysis of news discourse.We can make use of evidentiality to analyze news discourse in subtle ways to persuade readers.Combined with Aristotle's Rhetorical Theory,the author attempts to investigate the persuasive function of evidentiality in English news discourse by using the Appraisal Theory.The Appraisal Theory is a new development of SFL and can be regarded as an extension of interpersonal function.There are three sub-categorized systems,that is,Attitude,Engagement and Graduation.Rhetorical appeals of Aristotle are powerful in interpreting how the appraisal resources of news discourse achieve persuasion.In this study,the author randomly chooses 12 news reports of VOA from January to December in 2016 as research data.The study analyzes the data by means of the methods of qualitative and quantitative.By using the statistical analysis,manual labeling and software such as software Microsoft Office Word and AntConc,the author finds the distribution and frequency of different appraisal resources and calculates the percentages.In the end,the analysis aims at illustrating and illuminating how evidentiality of news discourse achieves the persuasive function to influence readers of news discourses.From the analysis,the main realization patterns of evidentiality are mainly indirect speech and direct speech.There are total 523 appraisal words which accounts for 12.30%of evidentiality resources.Engagement words are used most frequently followed by Attitude words,and Graduation words are the least used.Affect,Judgment and Appreciation in the Attitude words and some appraisal words in the Graduation can realize Pathos.Some Judgment words in the Attitude,Proclaim words,Entertain words and Attribute words in the Engagement and Soften words can achieve Ethos.Only Disclaim resources in Engagement words can achieve Logos.The study can have a deep understanding of news discourse and evidentiality from the analysis.The study that is combined with several theories is more intensive.Investigating the persuasive function of evidentiality in English news discourse by using appraisal theory can not only help the readers totally understand the deeper meaning of news reports and assert their own ideas while reading,but also help authors choose reasonable evidentials to achieve their communicative purposes. |
PDF Full Text Request