A Comparative Study Of Engagement Resources In Sino-American Economic News From The Perspective Of Appraisal Theory

Economic news covers a wide range of economic issues in people's daily life,involving financial policy,tax policy,marketing campaign,etc.It is of vital importance in people's social life.As the development of economy keeps accelerating,the updating and reform of tax policy have impacted people's normal life.On the basis of Appraisal Theory,this thesis intends to conduct a comparative analysis of the Engagement resources adopted in both Chinese and American economic news.Under the aid of UAM Corpus Tool,this thesis combines the qualitative and quantitative methods,aiming to find out the similarities as well as differences of Engagement resources between the Chinese and American economic news,and to analyze how the news writers in the two countries employ Engagement resources to align and disalign with the readers.Twenty American economic news of 13221 words from New York Times as well as twenty Chinese economic news of 13410 words from China Daily are selected in this thesis.The writer has classified the news into two corpora;annotated the Engagement resources and presented the frequencies and percentages of the Engagement resources.As is shown in the statistical results,both New York Times and China Daily have adopted a large quantity of Engagement resources to construct certain interpersonal relationship with the readers.There exist several similarities between the employment of Engagement resources in American economic news and Chinese economic news.Both the two newspapers have adopted more Dialogic Expansion resources than Dialogic Contraction resources.Within the subsystem of Proclaim value,the frequency of Endorse value is higher than that of Pronounce value in both corpora.Under the Dialogic Contraction system,the frequency of Attribute value is higher than that of Entertain value.Under the subsystem of Attribute value,both newspapers use more Acknowledge value than Distance value.While besides similarities,differences also exist between the two newspapers.In the Dialogic Contraction system,Chinese economic news uses more instances of Proclaim value over Disclaim value,while American economic news uses more Disclaim value.Within the sub-system of Disclaim value,the frequency of Deny value is basically the same with Counter value in American economic news,while Chinese economic news employs more Counter value over Deny value.Under the sub-system of Proclaim value,American economic news adopts more Pronounce value than Concur value,while Chinese economic news uses more instances of Concur value than Pronounce value.This study attempts to broaden the application range of the Appraisal Theory,to enhance readers' understanding of Engagement resources adopted in economic news and to offer pedagogical implications for the economic news reading and writing.