A Comparative Analysis Of Attitude Resources In Chinese And American Political News Discourses From The Perspective Of Appraisal Theory

Since the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the United States,trade relations between the two countries have been developing in frictions and twists.As the world's two largest economies,this trade war has had an inevitable impact on global economic development,attracting much media attention.At present,researches on the "Sino-American trade war" are still in the preliminary stage,and most of them are economic researches,and few of them are combined with linguistics.Appraisal Theory is a new development of the interpersonal theory of systematic functional linguistics.Appraisal mainly focuses on the interpersonal meaning of language.Appraisal Theory mainly presents the speaker's attitudes,positions and opinions on things through discourse.Martin divided Appraisal Theory into attitude,engagement,and graduation system.This thesis is based on the attitude system in the Appraisal Theory as the theoretical framework,and selects 48 news discourses from two mainstream newspapers of China Daily and The Washington Post as the research corpus,and makes a comparative analysis of attitude resources on trade disputes in Chinese and American political news discourses by combining qualitative and quantitative methods.The purpose of this study is to answer the following questions:1)What is the distribution of attitudes resources on the trade war in the political news discourses between China and the United States?2)What are the similarities and differences of the distribution of attitude resources in Chinese and American political news discourse on the trade war?3)What kind of ideology and political stance are hidden behind the attitude resources about the trade war in the political news discourses between China and the United States?The study shows that firstly,both Chinese and American news reports contain abundant attitude resources,among which judgement resources are the most predominant,appreciation resources are the second,and affect resources are the least;secondly,there are similarities in the news reports of the two major new medias:the negative attitude resources are obviously more than the positive attitude resources,which indicates that the two peoples are strongly opposed to the trade war,and want to reach a consensus of common development,mutual benefit and win-win.The difference is that more judgement resources and appreciations in Chinese news reports indicate that Chinese news reports are relatively objective.However,American news reports have more affect resources,indicating that American news reports are more inclined to talk about their feelings in the process of reporting;thirdly,there are two opposite views in The Washington Post includes:1)The majority of American people support Trump in an attempt to build China's hegemony and threat theory;2)Some Americans oppose Trump's trade policy and have a positive attitude towards the solution of the Sino-US trade war.Besides,the United States believes that China should be responsible for this trade war.The China Daily,however,believes that China is capable of handling Sino-U.S.trade frictions.Moreover,the trade war launched by the United States is unfavorable for the world economy and China's economy in particular.And China adheres to an attitude of respect,cooperation,and mutual benefitIn conclusion,this research not only confirms that attitude resources can be applied to different types of news discourse studies,and can explore the ideology and political position behind language,but also help to increase learners' awareness of critical reading and improve their insights into news reports.