A Contrastive Study Of Major Festival Speeches By Leaders Of China,the United Kingdom And The United States Based On Appraisal Theory

Spring Festival and Christmas are the most important and solemn festivals in China and the West.During the festival,people have to look back on the past and look forward to the future.It has become an international practice for the Chinese President to deliver speeches on the Spring Festival and for the President of the United States and the Queen of Britain to deliver speeches on Christmas Day.The speeches delivered by national leaders not only express Festival wishes,but also express their attitudes and views towards international and domestic development,which is conducive to consolidating relations with the public.Using James Martin's Appraisal theory and quantitative and qualitative research methods,this thesis makes a comparative analysis of Chinese President Xi Jinping's Spring Festival Address,American President Trump's and Barack Obama's Christmas Addresses and the Queen Elizabeth 's Christmas Address from 2017 to 2019.It explores the similarities and differences in the use of evaluation resources in the three groups of speeches,reveals their characteristics,and explains people,interpret interpersonal meaning.Through the collection,collation and analysis of the corpus,this thesis draws the following conclusions:Firstly,there are 809 evaluation resources in the three groups of discourses,among which attitude resources are the most,followed by gradation resources and engagement.Secondly,about attitude resources,there are a lot of positive attitude resources in the three groups of discourses.Among the Christmas speeches of British and American leaders,emotional resources account for the largest proportion,among which happy resources account for the majority,expressing the joy of celebrating major festivals.Appreciation resources accounted for the largest proportion in the speech delivered by the Chinese President on the Spring Festival,reflecting the Chinese President's appreciation and encouragement of the achievements made by the people.Thirdly,About engagement resources,the three groups of discourses are mainly monogloss resources,reflecting the seriousness and authority of the leaders of the three countries.Among the hetorogloss,there are a lot of attribute and entertain strategies in major holiday speeches of China and the United States,and the Queen of England uses a lot of negation in her Christmas speeches.Fourthly,About gradation resources,there are more force resources in all three groups of discourses,and the distribution of intensification and quantification is balanced;in the focus resources,there are more obvious resources and few ambiguous resources.