A Study Of Appraisal Resources In The State Of The Union Addresses By President Trump (2017-2020)

Political discourses are an important social activity to help politicians to popularize their political ideas and ideology.Therefore,political discourses attract lots of attention in different fields to analyze them from different perspectives.The State of the Union address,as a part of the administrative program of the United States,is a typical political discourse to illustrate the domestic and foreign situations that President Trump faces each year and demonstrate the measures which the government will carry out.For the above reasons,scholars have made intensive and extensive studies of the State of the Union addresses from different viewpoints.Since President Trump took office in 2017,he has impressed the people abroad and at home because of his amazing,direct and bold words.As a result,increasing numbers of people pay more attention to his speeches.Due to the limited governing time of President Trump,scholars mainly focus on his inaugural address and weekly speeches.There are fewer studies to make an overall analysis of the State of the Union addresses by President Trump from the perspective of appraisal theory.And this study mainly focuses on the State of the Union addresses by President Trump from the perspective of appraisal theory in order to analyze abundant appraisal resources and their functions in the texts.Martin developed appraisal theory based on interpersonal function.It is about evaluation,which organizes evaluation in three semantic domains including Attitude,Engagement and Graduation.He believes that appraisal theory is an interpersonal system constructed at the discourse semantic level(Martin&White 2005).Since this framework was put forward in the 1990 s,it has been continuously revised and improved to form a relatively complete text analysis system.In three semantic domains,attitude system is the core system that relates to our feelings,including emotional reactions,judgement of behavior and evaluation of things(Martin & White2005).It could be divided into three subsystems including Affect,Judgement and Appreciation.Engagement system mainly deals with the resources of interpersonalXmeanings related to attitudes from the social dialogical perspective which includes monologue and heterogloss.Graduation system is the third sub-system of Appraisal Theory.It refers to the up-scaling and down-scaling and can be realized by focus and force.Studying political discourses within the framework of Appraisal Theory could dig out speakers’ attitudes and stance and make a deep analysis of interpersonal meaning embodied in the texts.This study takes Appraisal Theory as the theoretical framework and UAM CorpusTool 3.3 as the analytical tool to annotate appraisal resources including attitude,engagement and graduation embodied in the texts.In the meanwhile,the qualitative method and the quantitative method are to be used in order to make the study more pervasive and accurate.This thesis mainly focuses on the distribution and realization of appraisal resources as well as the functions of these resources embodied in the corpus aiming to answer the following three research questions:1.How do appraisal resources distribute in the SOTU addresses by President Trump?2.What are the forms of realization of appraisal resources in the SOTU addresses by President Trump?3.What are the major functions of appraisal resources in the SOTU addresses by President Trump?It is found that the total number of appraisal resources embodied in the texts is2145.First of all,as for the distribution of appraisal resources in the State of the Union addresses,it is found that there are abundant appraisal resources embodied in the texts.For instance,919 attitudinal resources account for 42.84%,842 engagement resources 39.25% and 384 graduation resources 17.91%.In attitude system,374 appreciation resources take the proportion of 40.70%,350 judgement resources38.08% and 195 affect resources 21.22%.In engagement resources,835 heterogloss resources account for 99.17% and 7 monogloss resources 0.83%.In graduation resources,225 force resources take the proportion of 58.59% and 159 focus resources41.41%.As for the realization of appraisal resources in the State of the Union addresses,there are different kinds of appraisal resources to help President Trump achieve his goals.For instance,he prefers the words like new,fantastic,great,creative,safe,together and terrible to evaluate his country and citizens.He also employs resources including will,can,must,could,ought to and other modalities.In the meanwhile,he uses no,not and other negative words to expand or contract the dialogical space.He employs the words like real,ultimately,all,finally and almost to make the topic more clear and sharpen as well.In addition,he also uses comparatives and superlatives to intensify the topic.Finally,the functions of the appraisal resources in the State of the Union addresses are found through the above analysis.It can be summarized as popularizing the governing measures,establishing the authority and intensifying the stance.First of all,President Trump uses various negative appraisal resources to criticize Barack Obama’s administrative program and lots of positive resources to praise his economic and political plans.Secondly,appraisal resources could also help President Trump establish the government’s authority.For instance,he uses these resources to urge both two parties and all citizens to work together so as to defend their country and achieve their dreams.Finally,he intensifies his stance by using various appraisal resources.He is sure that his government will build a prosperous,harmonious and democratic society for all Americans.This thesis has following significance.Firstly,this study makes a comprehensive analysis of the State of the Union addresses from the perspective of Appraisal Theory,which proves that Appraisal Framework could help us to dig out the interpersonal meaning hidden behind the political language.That is,analyzing appraisal resources could help readers have a deeper understanding of the true meaning of the State of the Union addresses.Secondly,this study explores various strategies for making successful political speeches which could help politicians achieve their goals to some degree.Thirdly,it is also conducive to language learning.By exploring kinds of appraisal resources in political discourses,English learners could learn how to infuse interpersonal meaning into their writings skillfully.There are some limitations and suggestions in this thesis.Firstly,there are only four addresses delivered by President Trump in his presidency.Secondly,this study does not divide the whole texts into several parts according to the different themes.Because of the limitations above,some suggestions could be made.First of all,more political addresses should be selected in later studies which can be divided into different fields including economy,policy,education and health care and the like based on the themes,which could make the results more pervasive and objective.