| Since the industrial revolution in the 18th century,mankind has been over-exploring nature,relying on advanced science and technology and production facilities,which has made ecological damage an increasingly serious crisis.In recent years,with the development of science and technology,communication tools and transportation industries,countries around the world have generally expedited industrial production and development.Even though significant scientific and technological progresses have been achieved,ecological environmental problems spread from the pioneering industrialized countries to the world,and then evolved into a global issue.Therefore,the public’s awareness of ecological environment protection needs improving.However,most Chinese scholars focus on ecological environmental protection news discourse from the perspective of media communication,and there is little research on the comparative study of Chinese and English ecological environmental protection news.Therefore,this paper takes Appraisal Theory as the theoretical framework,selects "ecological environmental protection","pollution","environmental problem",etc.as keywords to seek for relevant news in the official websites of China Daily and The Times,ranging from August,2017 to July,2018,with the attempt to conduct a comparative analysis of the attitudinal resources in Chinese and English ecological environmental protection news under the framework of Appraisal Theory.The research questions of this study are as follows:Question l:What are the overall distributional characteristics of attitudinal resources adopted in Chinese and English ecological environmental protection news?Question 2:What are the similarities and differences of attitudinal resources between Chinese and English ecological environmental protection news?Question 3:What are the functions of attitudinal resources in Chinese and English ecological environmental protection news?This paper combines quantitative and qualitative analysis.With the help of the analytic tool UAM Corpus Tool(version 3.3.p),firstly,we are going to code the attitudinal resources in 15 pieces of Chinese and 15 pieces of English ecological environmental protection news and get corresponding statistics,so as to carry out statistical analysis for further discussion,which plays an important part in the descriptive data of three subsystems of attitude,namely,affect,judgement and appreciation.Then,we will conduct a qualitative analysis,and present the similarities and differences of distributions in affect,judgment and appreciation resources.The results of this study indicate that:(1)There are totally 841 attitudinal resources in Chinese ecological environmental protection news,and the number of attitudinal resources in English ecological environmental protection news is 717.On the whole,the distributional characteristics of attitudinal resources in Chinese and English ecological environmental protection news can be summarized as follows:Firstly,according to the statistical results,the similarities in the distributions of attitudinal resources in Chinese and English corpora demonstrate that similarities exceed differences in the comparison of these samples.Specifically,in the two corpora,judgement resources occupy the vast majority of the total resources Appreciation resources rank second.Both Chinese and English reporters give least preference to affect resources.Secondly,the proportion of judgement and appreciation resources in Chinese ecological environmental protection news is higher than that in The Times,and the frequency of affect resources in China Daily was less than those in The Times.Thirdly,according to both corpora,we find that both Chinese and English reporters prefer positive attitudinal resources to negative ones largely.However,attitude polarity still differs from each other to some extent.The frequency of positive attitude in Chinese ecological environmental protection news exceeds that in English corpus,for Chinese reporters are more positive in expressing attitudes towards what has been achieved in ecological environmental protection career,while English news reporters prefer negative attitudes to critically reveal the current predicaments they are facing.(2)Through our research,we find that affect,judgement and appreciation resources between Chinese and English ecological environmental protection news are similar to each other;at the same time,differences still exist.The similarities and differences of distributions in affect,judgement and appreciation resources between Chinese and English ecological environmental protection news are presented as follows.As for the similarities:Firstly,as for affect resources,dis/inclination is the most favorable resource in both Chinese and English ecological environmental protection news,followed by in/security resources.Un/happiness ranks third,and dis/satisfaction resources take up the least proportion.Secondly,the overall distributions of judgement resources in both Chinese and English ecological environmental protection news are similar.Capacity in social sanction is the most frequently used,followed by normality,propriety,tenacity and veracity.Thirdly,as for appreciation resources,valuation is the most frequently used,followed by composition and reaction.As for the di fferences:Firstly,The Times adopts more affect resources than China Daily.Chinese journalists adopt comparatively more dis/inclination resources than the English reporters.Besides,The Times prefers un/happiness and in/security resources.Secondly,as for judgement resources,there are more normality and propriety resources in China Daily;however,The Times employs more tenacity and capacity resources than the China Daily.The Times prefers reaction and composition resources more frequently than China Daily;at the same time,China Daily gives preference to social-evaluations.(3)The functions of attitudinal resources in Chinese and English ecological environmental protection news are as follows.Firstly,attitudinal resources in Chinese and English ecological environmental protection news are conducive to creating a good atmosphere of public opinion by exerting exemplary function.Secondly,attitudinal resources in Chinese and English ecological environmental protection news raise and enhance the public’s awareness of ecological environmental protection.Thirdly,attitudinal resources in Chinese and English ecological environmental protection news help to create public opinion supervision and coordinate social interests.Based on the above research findings,this study not only broadens the research scope of Appraisal Theory,but also provides some reference and inspiration for news discourse analysis. |
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