A Positive Discourse Analysis Of The Report On The Work Of The Government Based On The Appraisal Theory

The Report on the Work of the Government is an official document which is published by the government of the People's Republic of China yearly.It is an important way for the government to present the comprehensive strength and the integrated plan of politics,economy,culture,society,eco-civilization and other aspects to the whole populace.RWG(2016)summarizes the perfect ending of all the work of the ‘Twelfth Five-Year Plan' of2015 and points out the main objectives and major initiatives of the ‘Thirteenth Five-Year Plan' and the main work of the 2016.Therefore,this thesis selects the latest RWG(2016)of such a transition node for discourse analysis.In terms of research methodology,most of the explanations of RWG are political interpretation and most existing research of RWG is analyzed from the perspective of translation or language feature.When it comes to the linguistic perspective,there are only few researches from critical discourse analysis which however violates the ‘Peace Linguistics'.So this thesis chooses the positive discourse analysis as the perspective,uses the Appraisal Theory proposed by Martin as the theoretical framework,counts the distribution of various resources in RWG(2016)by means of self-built corpus and AntConc software and then interpret some typical examples to explore what positive meaning these resources passed and how the government use them to shape its image.The distribution of all the appraisal resources and their functions are found through the qualitative and quantitative data analysis of official release English version of RWG(2016).(1)The graduation resources are more than attitude and engagement ones because they are used to down-scale or up-scale the attitude and engagement ones to make the discourse more accurate and authentic.Attitude resources rank second to represent thecomprehensive strength of China.Engagement resources are least relatively but they show the inclusiveness and authority of the government through the adjustment of dialogic space.(2)In the whole attitude system,positive resources are far more than negative ones,indicating the overall tone of the report and its positive significance.(3)In attitude system,the use of jugdement and appreciation resources is more than the affect ones.Capacity resources occur frequently in judgement,and reaction and valuation in appreciation,which fully demonstrated the powerful ability of the government and the comprehensive high level of all aspects of China.As to the government image-shaping,affect shapes a people-concerned and people-caring one,judgement a capable and responsible one and aprreciation a confidence one.(4)In engagement system,the expansion resources are more than the contraction resources,which reflects the inclusiveness and objectiveness of RWG.It shapes a inclusive image of the government.The small number of proclaim and disclaim resources also show the government's resolute attitude upon some special things,which shapes a resolute image of the government.(5)The graduation system runs through the whole RWG,mainly to enhance the positive meaning and achieve the purpose of persuading the people.Intensification resources give a clear attitude and adjust the tone to enhance the appeal of the discourse.Quantification makes the entity or number more accurate in order to enhance the authenticity of the report.They make the image of the government become clearer and intensified.In short,the positive discourse analysis of RWG from the perspective of the Appraisal Theory not only dig out the positive meaning inside the report,but also understand the positive meaning the government has passed and the image it shapes through using the appraisal resources.