A Comparative Study Of China And South Korea's News Commentaries From The Perspective Of Attitude In Appraisal Theory

THAAD issue has gradually formed since the US put forward the demand that South Korea join anti-missile system.In recent years,the issue caused by South Korea's decision to deploy THAAD has been heating up,which has drawn a number of news commentaries both in China and South Korea.News commentary is a vital part of journalism,through which commentators review social issues and incidents to express attitudes and positions of themselves or even of countries and readers can know the value judgment and inner meaning behind the news.At present,a review of literature shows that few studies are conducted to explore the Attitude resources in different countries' news commentaries on certain political event,in addition,rare studies concerned with THAAD issue have been done from the perspective of linguistics.From the perspective of Attitude System,one of three subsystems of AT,this study is a comparative study of Attitude resources in China and South Korea's news commentaries on THAAD issue.In order to explore the similarities and differences of distribution of Attitude in China and South Korea's news commentaries on THAAD issue,this study selected 20 news commentaries on THAAD issue from China Daily and 20 news commentaries on THAAD issue from Korea Times respectively and conducted a comparative analysis by using quantitative method,qualitative method and comparative analysis.First,two small scale corpora are established based on the selected news commentaries.Second,Attitude resources are identified and labeled in both corpora and the occurrence and frequency of all kinds of resources are counted and calculated.Finally,the distribution of Attitude resources in both corpora is presented and analyzed with detailed examples.The major findings of this study are as follows.(1)There are five similarities between the distribution of Attitude resources in China and South Korea's news commentaries on THAAD issue.From an overall perspective of Attitude:Firstly,both China and South Korea's news commentaries on THAAD issue are loaded with many Attitude resources.Compared with Appreciation resource and Judgment resource,Affect resource which manifests one's feelings is the least employed Attitude resource compared to the other two kinds of resources in China and South Korea's news commentaries on THAAD issue.Secondly,explicit Attitude is more adopted by commentators of both China and South Korea's news commentaries on THAAD issue in order to clarify certain attitudes and positions,which is closely related with the stylistic features of news commentary.From the perspective of sub-types:Firstly,in Appreciation,Composition is the least employed Attitude type.Secondly,as the sub-type of Judgment,Normality and Veracity are rarely used in China and South Korea's news commentaries on THAAD issue.Thirdly,in Affect,Dis/inclination resource plays an important role in expressing hopes and demands in both corpora.(2)There are six differences between the distribution of Attitude resources in China and South Korea's news commentaries on THAAD issue.From an overall perspective of Attitude:Firstly,Chinese commentators exhibit a strong preference for encoding Attitude as Appreciation that is concerned with aesthetic evaluation while South Korean commentators tend to use Judgment that is deals with evaluation of people and their behaviors as the main resource.Secondly,negative Attitude resource is more frequently employed in South Korea's news commentaries on THAAD issue than in China's news commentaries on THAAD issue,which in certain degree demonstrates that South Korean commentators tend to hold negative attitude in South Korea's news commentaries on THAAD issue.Thirdly,though in both corpora explicit Attitude resource outnumbers implicit Attitude resource,the latter occupies a larger proportion in China's news commentaries on THAAD issue than in South Korea's news commentaries on THAAD issue.From the perspective of sub-types:First,it is found that in Appreciation Valuation is preferred by Chinese commentators while Reaction,the most personal Appreciation,is preferred by South Korean commentators to express their feelings and attitudes.Second,in Judgment,South Korean commentators mainly adopt Capacity resource and Propriety resource while Chinese commentators often employ Tenacity resource as their Judgment appraisal.Besides,positive Judgment exceeds negative Judgment in China's news commentaries on THAAD issue while negative ones dominate Judgment in South Korea's news commentaries on THAAD issue.Third,in Affect,In/security is more used by Chinese commentators while South Korean commentators show a preference for Dis/satisfaction.Besides,Un/happiness which deals with the direct emotions of people is more used by South Korean commentators in South Korea's news commentaries on THAAD issue.