A Study On Editorials In New York Times Based On The Engagement Perspective Of Appraisal Theory

Appraisal theory,as a new lexical-grammar,originated from the interpersonal meaning of Systematic Functional Linguistics. The theory focuses on various negotiable attitudes in the discourse. It is composed of three sub-systems: attitude, engagement and graduation.Engagement including the language resources of discourses and writer’s voices refers to the means of interpersonal or ideational negotiation.The thesis studies engagement resources in editorials in New York Times from the engagement perspective of appraisal theory. First the corpus of this study is built; the author has downloaded twelve editorials published from June to September in 2012 from New York Times official website, and the topics of these editorials cover various fields, such as economy,politics, and culture, etc. Then the linguistics software UAM Corpus Tool is employed to calculate the distribution data. And according to the statistical distribution from UAM Corpus Tool, the writer analyzes the distribution features and rules of editorials in New York Times from dialogic contraction and dialogic expansion respectively. Finally, the author interprets the function of engagement resources in editorials in New York Times from the interpersonal meaning perspective. The results of the study indicate that contract values are higher than expand values; the employment of disclaim resources is more than that of proclaim resources;entertain resources outnumber attribute resources. Engagement resources in the course of interpreting the interpersonal meaning of editorials construct a bridge for the information transmission between writers and readers as well as open up the interpersonal space for the writers’ propositions.