A Comparative Study Of Appraisal Resources In Chinese And American Commencement Speeches

This thesis is a comparative study of lexical Appraisal resources between Chinese and American commencement speeches(CCS and ACS)within the framework of Appraisal Theory.Appraisal Theory,as a complement to Halliday's grammar-oriented study of interpersonal meaning,is concerned with ‘evaluative' lexis for construing personal attitudes and intersubjective stances in discourse semantics.Most previous studies have focused on the analysis of Appraisal resources in English discourses of many genres,but few Appraisal researches have been made on Chinese discourses nor on the comparative study of Chinese and English discourses of the same genre.Despite the comparison of distribution features of Appraisal lexes in CCS and ACS,this study explores the interpersonal meaning of Appraisal resources and reasons for the similarities and differences in CCS and ACS.In this thesis,Appraisal resources are studied from two self-constructed corpora.One corpus is made of 6 Tsinghua University commencement speeches(Chinese)and the other is made of 6 Harvard University ones(English).The approach adopted is the combination of quantitative and qualitative analyses.Firstly,lexical Appraisal resources are manually annotated and then collected and counted in the two corpora.Secondly,the comparison of Appraisal resources is made between CCS and ACS,and interpersonal meanings are expounded with discourse extracts.Finally,possible reasons for Appraisal similarities and differences between them are explored.This study reveals that there are both similarities and differences in Appraisal employment between CCS and ACS.The similarities of the two corpora are as follows.In both CCS and ACS,Attitude is the most frequently employed Appraisal resource and the positive Attitude far outnumbers the negative one.It indicates all speakers take full advantage of commencement speeches to express their positive attitudes towards the appraised.More specific,speakers in both corpora incline to employ more Inclination and Security Affect resources to extend their wishes,expectations and trust to graduatingstudents.Judgement resources are of least employment in the two corpora and speakers all prefer to judging a person based on his/her dependability and capability.In terms of Engagement,speakers of CCS and ACS discard Distance and employ Entertain and Acknowledge resources to open up dialogic space with the audience.Moreover,they all prefer to constraining dialogic alternatives by their personal intervention or emphasis rather than overt denial or replacement.As regards Graduation,speakers in both corpora employ much more Force,especially Raise resources,than Focus ones to increase their investment in the attitudinal feelings and their engagement with the value position being advanced.The differences of the two corpora are as follows.In general,speakers of CCS employ more Graduation resources to scale the degrees of attitudinal feelings and their engagement with the value positions being advanced in speeches,whereas the speaker of ACS employs more Engagement resources to adjust their investment in the value position so as to open up or constrain the dialogic space with the audience.In terms of Attitude,speakers of CCS employ more positive Affect resources,especially Happiness in commencement situation.The speaker of ACS prefers to evaluating the social value of the appraised with more Appreciation resources.When judging people's behavior,speakers of CCS attach most importance to dependability whereas the speaker of ACS takes one ' s capacity most seriously.In terms of Engagement,speakers of CCS prefer to employing Dialogic Contraction to constrain the scope of dialogistic alternatives whereas the speaker of ACS inclines to open up the dialogic space with more employment of Dialogic Expansion resources.More specific,the speaker of ACS employs more Entertain and Acknowledge resources to establish rapport with the audience.Speakers of CCS disregard challenges from the audience by asserting themselves with more Pronounce resources.Reasons have been pointed out for these similarities and differences from perspectives of contextual characteristics and cultural differences.On the one hand,all speakers of CCS and ACS take advantage of commencement speech to deliver to the graduating students positive attitudes,expectations,wishes and encouragement.On the other hand,American culture is largely manifested in its dominant values ofindividualism,progress,competition,change and uncertainty,and in the ethics of Christianity.These cultural factors explain why there are more resources of judgement of people's capacity and appreciation of social value in ACS.Believing in change and uncertainty,more Dialogic Expansion resources are used to open up dialogic space with the audience in ACS.In contrast,the dominant Chinese culture is collectivism which features interpersonal harmony.This explains why there are more positive affective resources and judgements based on people's dependability.Attaching more importance to social norms defined by the group and belief shared with the in-group,speakers of CCS use more authorial intervention and emphasis to constrain the dialogic space with the audience.This study contributes to the writing and understanding of commencement speeches.Speakers should pay attention to the choices of Appraisal lexes so as to realise certain interpersonal meanings,and listeners should be familiar with these choices so as to easily identify attitudes,stances and speech intentions of speakers.