A Comparative Analysis Of Reported Speech In Chinese And American News Reports: From Critical Appraisal Perspective

As a significant linguistic phenomenon,reported speech abounds in news discourse and is an effective tool for journalists to intervene in others' utterances and convey specific attitudes and ideologies of news media.Hence,there is a tendency to study reported speech in news reports under the framework of critical discourse analysis.However,most of previous studies explore reported speech from its reporting modes,reporting verbs and news source,ignoring the content of reported speech,especially attitudinal resources contained in it.Combining Fairclough's three-dimensional framework with attitude system of appraisal theory,the present study,therefore,proposes a theoretical framework to make a comparative analysis of reported speech in Chinese and American news reports on the impeachment of South Korean president Park Geun-hye,with the aim to disclose various attitudes and ideologies covered in the two newspapers.In the thesis,125 pieces of news reports are collected from China Daily(CD)and The Washington Post(WP),which are annotated by the research instrument of UAM Corpus Tool 3.3.Through combining quantitative and qualitative research methods,the study is carried out from three major dimensions.Specifically,reporting modes and news source are classified and compared on the description dimension.An attitudinal analysis of content of reported speech from South Korean party and government is performed on the dimension of interpretation,and explanation dimension deals with sociocultural contexts responsible for the similarities and differences of reported speech.The analysis comes to the following findings.On description dimension: firstly,as for reporting modes,although indirect speech is the most frequently adopted mode and free direct speech and free indirect speech are the two least employed modes in the two newspapers,more indirect speech is used in CD than in WP while more direct speech is used in WP than in CD.Secondly,in terms of news source,American coverage quotes more sources,which are given similarly equal speaking power whereas voices of party and government are the most frequently heard in CD.On interpretation dimension: the attitudinal analysis of reported speech from South Korean party and government shows that affect resources are used most and appreciation resources are employed least in both newspapers.But affect is far more in CD than that in WP,whereas judgment is much more in WP than that in CD.On explanation dimension: the similarities and differences of reported speech in CD and WP are related to cultural and social institutional backgrounds of the two countries,reflecting their different attitudes and ideologies.Chinese newspaper focuses on the impeachment case itself and is more neutral,while American newspaper concentrates on the comments on the event and is less objective.As for research significance,on the one hand,it is effective to study reported speech in news discourse by combining Fairclough's three-dimensional framework and attitude system of appraisal theory,which not only expands the research contents of critical discourse analysis but also enhances the theoretical applicability of attitude system in appraisal theory.On the other hand,the study helps to deepen news readers' and English learners' understanding of reported speech in news discourse and is beneficial to the cultivation of their language and critical consciousness.