Positive Discourse Analysis Of News Reports On President Xi Jinping's Visit To Britain In China Daily And The Guardian

Put forward in the 1970s,critical discourse analysis(CDA)has been studied by many scholars.It intends to reveal the hidden relationship between language,power and ideology.It studies how language reflects power and ideology,or in turn how power and ideology influence the use of language.CDA focuses on the inequality in the discourse.As a new perspective of discourse analysis,positive discourse analysis(PDA)developed from CDA.It focuses on "good" news,and aims at solving problems positively and constructing a harmonious society through discourse analysis.Appraisal theory develops from the study of interpersonal function within Systemic Functional Linguistics.It is concerned with the attitude and emotion of speakers or writers,and the aligning of listeners or readers into the similar position.It has three subsystems:attitude,engagement and graduation.Mr Xi Jinping's state visit to Britain from 19th to 23rd October 2015 is an influential event in the world.The present study chooses President Xi's state visit as the topic and collects 8 news reports from China Daily and The Guardian.The study explores sense making and the realization of text's communicative functions from the perspective of PDA with appraisal system as the theoretical framework.It mainly discusses two questions:how all kinds of appraisal resources are distributed in the news reports on President Xi Jinping's visit to Britain in both China Daily and The Guardian and what the positive roles of all appraisal resources are in those news reports in facilitating the stronger relationships between China and Britain.The results are shown as follows.Firstly,positive attitude resources in both China Daily and The Guardian are much more than the negative attitude resources.By reading the positive feelings,judgment and appreciation shown in the news reports,the same positive attitudes of readers towards the new relationship between China and Britain will be aroused.More negative attitude resources are deployed by The Guardian than by China Daily.However,negative resources do not play a negative role.Instead,they reflect the fact that two countries are working hard to establish harmonious and balanced bilateral relationships.Secondly,in engagement system,acknowledging resources in dialogic expansion system occur in the most frequency in China Daily and The Guardian.Different voices from China and Britain are invited by the news reports to open up the dialogic space.These voices indicate that all levels of two countries pay much attention to the new cooperative relationships and they have ardent expectations of future development.Disclaim resources in dialogic contraction system take the second place.By denying or countering,the news reports introduce affirmative propositions to close down dialogic space and to persuade readers to align with their positions.There are much more dialogic contraction resources in The Guardian than in China Daily.The Guardian introduces propositions first and then rejects or replaces them,which indicates Britain's positive recognition of their global strategic partnership with China.Thirdly,in graduation system,both China Daily and The Guardian prefer to employ a large number of up-scaling force resources to reach their communicative effect.In these force resources,The Guardian uses slightly more quantification resources than China Daily,which can be explained by Britain's diplomatic policy.China Daily uses more focus resources than The Guardian does.These sharpening values indicate the mutual hope for the stable development of the bilateral partnership between China and Britain.With appraisal system as the theoretical framework,8 news reports in China Daily and The Guardian are analyzed from the perspective of PDA.The study not only helps to enhance readers' constructive awareness and guide readers to view relationships between two countries positively,but also finds out the relevance of PDA to the goal of constructing harmonious societies and international relations.In addition,the study has practical and theoretical significance in both discourse analysis of news reports and the application of PDA.