A Contrastive Study Of Attitudinal Resources Of Political Address From The Perspective Of The Appraisal Theory

In the 1990s James Martin and other functional linguists put forward the Appraisal Theory,which offers people a new approach to study Appraisal Resources from the lexical level rather than the clause level.It is considered as an extension and supplement of Halliday's Systemic-Functional Linguistics.This thesis aims to find out the Attitudinal Resources distributive features,and the discourses chosen in this thesis are political addresses about Iraq war by President Bush and Obama.Although the two addresses have attracted enormous academic attention both abroad and at home ever since their delivery,there are few linguistic researches concerning them.Finally the following findings are identified.First,Attitudinal evaluations abound in the two addresses.The three categories of Attitudinal Resources(Affect,Judgement and Appreciation)all appear in Bush and Obama's addresses about Iraq war.Second,there are not only similarities but also some characteristics about differences.Third,the personal,political and social factors are underlying the application of Attitudinal Resources.This thesis validates the applicability and feasibility of the Attitude Resources in analyzing the Attitudinal meaning of political address,and provides some valuable insights into English language learning and Appraisal research.