A Critical Discourse Analysis On News Discourse From The Perspective Of Appraisal Theory

As a branch of modern linguistics,Critical Discourse Analysis(CDA)focuses on language's social attribute and the process of producing textual meaning.It aims to explore and explain the social background,ideology,power and dominance relations and author's intentions behind language use and features.For a long time,Critical Discourse Analysis is under the framework of the three functions of systemic functional linguistics.However,the Appraisal Theory is rarely used as the theoretical framework for critical discourse analysis.So this paper explores the interpersonal meaning of discourse by taking Appraisal Theory as the theoretical framework,so as to explore how to objectively analyze and interpret discourse,and how to analyze the profound meaning and implications of language.Appraisal Theory proposed by Martin and White is on the basis of the functional linguistics of the development system.The theory contains three systems: attitude,engagement,and graduation.In this paper,the news discourse analysis is under the framework of the three systems.With the development of China's economy,Chinese culture has been widely spread abroad.As an important carrier of Chinese culture,Confucius Institute in all parts of the world has made great contributions.However,the overseas development of Confucius Institute is not smooth.There are many questioning voices in the relevant news reports abroad.And the case study of Confucius Institute based on the Appraisal Theory is almost blank.Therefore,using “Confucius Institute” as keywords to collect the news reports from the western mainstream media's official website,the author has selected 16 news reports with Confucius Institute as the headlines from2005 to 2017.The author uses the selected news reports as research material for data analysis,aiming to carry out the Critical Discourse Analysis of news discourse under the framework of Appraisal Theory.This research is devoted to the analysis of the characteristics of language in news reports of Confucius Institute,aiming to reveal the relationship between ideology and power behind language,and then analyze the image of Confucius Institute in the mainstream Western media.In addition,through the analysis and discussion of the image of Confucius Institute and the voice of doubt,the study endeavors to provide certain reference for the later development of Confucius Institute.Through data collection and quantitative and qualitative analysis,it is found that the most frequently used resources among the three systems are engagement accounting for 64.3%,followed by attitude and graduation.Among the engagement resources,the most frequently used resource is dialogic expansion.Among the attitude resources,the positive resources are 31.9%,and the negative resources accounts for 68.1%,which reflects that the western mainstream media's evaluation of Confucius Institute is dominated by negative evaluation,influenced by ideology,social culture and power.This paper attempts to hold a dialectical view of the negative evaluation.On the one hand,the study shows that the development of the Confucius Institute relies on the financial support from government.However,the later development can be more involved in civil support so as to make Confucius Institute be filled with more folk color;on the other hand,the study shows that the evaluation which consider Confucius Institute just as the propaganda tool is the misreading of western media influenced by its ideology.Hence,readers need to be objective and dialectical to interpret the author's intention of the news reports.In conclusion,this paper combines CDA and Appraisal Theory to discuss and analyze the news reports of Confucius Institute from western mainstream media.Through the analysis and discussion of the ideology and power behind the language,this study explores the social and cultural factors of discourse.And it is sincerely hoped that the findings of this study can help English learners to understand the relationship between language and power and learn to reveal and interpret the hidden ideology and the writers' views and intentions from the perspective of the language use.At the same time,it is expected that the study can help to correctly interpret the image of Confucius Institute in western countries and give suggestions to the government so as to promote its healthy development overseas.