On The Evaluation In Foreign Trade Correspondence Based On The Appraisal System

In 1990s,linguists began the study on evaluation represented by the dialogue and attitude in discourse.Among those,Martin proposed the appraisal system,which has been developed by scholars from home and abroad and has been widely used for all kinds of discourse analysis.This thesis researches foreign trade correspondences from the perspective of appraisal system including attitude system,engagement system and graduation system.It attempts to explore distributing characteristics of the subsystems of appraisal system in FTC discourse,and to draw some guidance on FTC writing and teaching.The research is conducted by quantitative and qualitative methods with research object based on a self-built corpus of 100 FTC emails collected from foreign trade staff who work for small and medium scale companies.It has been found that the three sub-systems of the appraisal system are unequally distributed in FTC discourse.The wide distribution of positive appreciation and affect resources is the main feature of FTC discourse.Besides,more heteroglossic resources are found in FTC than the monoglossic resources.Under graduation subsystem,the force resources are more common than the focus resources.The author according to the actual situation strengthens or weakens his or her mentioned point of view,and accordingly takes strategies of upgrading force or downgrading force.The research reveals that there are large numbers of distributed appraisal resources in FTC discourse.Writers attempt to make positive evaluation on their own products and services with purposes of making customers accept their evaluation unconsciously and purchase their products and services.Meanwhile,writers are always open to customers' voices and stances so as to maintain good relations with customers.