An Appraisal Analysis On Generic Structure Of The "Double First-Class" University Prospectus

Studies have shown that the trend of marketization has entrenched the discourse of higher education on various genres(Askehave,2007;Xiong,2012;Zhang,2018).Chinese government launched the “Double First-Class” initiative recently in 2015 to promote the development of higher education and introduce competition.In this sense,the analysis of the genre of “Double First-Class” university(DFCU)prospectus can be a means to understand the order of the discourse of current China higher education.Previous studies of the university prospectus have been mostly restricted to the examination of the construction of the university identity according to the research framework on the Discourse-Historical Approach.Little attention has been paid to the role of the appraisal resources in image construction.Hence the current prospectus constructions of university's image,to some extent,are shown to be relatively stereotyped.In light of that,this study will employ Appraisal thoery as a powerful and feasible framework(White,2001)to explore the university's identity with the consideration of the appraisal resources exsiting in the prospectus.Furthermore,few studies have considered the university prospectus as an info-promotional genre from the perspective of genre hybridization.Hence,this study will examine the university's image with the guidance of Appraisal theory and further explore the generic structure of the university prospectus genre from the perspective of genre hybridization.Drawing upon Appraisal Theory and Genre Theory,this study investigates the genre of university prospectus of the DFCU.The purpose of this study is twofold.First,it aims to reveal the rhetorical structure and the appraisal features of the genre of the university prospectus.Second,it aims to explore how the university prospectus attempts to achieve self-promotion through the manipulation of the move structure and the evaluative choices of the genre.Findings firstly suggest that an authoritative image of the university is constructed to distinguish itself from the peer competitors.Meanwhile,a five-move structure identified from the corpus manifests that the university prospectus genre is ahybridization of promotional genres for marketization and introductory genres for description.Besides,two patterns of attitudinal prosody are worked out to play an effective role in persuading the putative students to align with the university.This study then indicates that both the Appraisal resources and the hybridized move structure are effective in achieving self-promotion of the university prospectus and these linguistic characteristics of the university prospectus genre can be considered as a reflection of the general cultural and social context of current China.