A Rhetorical Study Of Attitudinal Resources In The "Belt And Road Initiative" English News Of Chinese Media

General Secretary Xi Jinping has mentioned the “Belt and Road Initiative” for five times in the report of the 19 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China,emphasizing the need to “promote the building of international communication capacity and tell a good story about China.” English news is an important way to promote the construction of the “Belt and Road Initiative”.Its significance is unquestionable,and related research is still in the ascendant.However,most scholars study this initiative from the perspective of journalism and communication,and the linguistic study about the “Belt and Road Initiative” of Chinese media is still rare.In this thesis,200 pieces of English news are randomly selected from May 2015 to May 2019 as a research corpus from China Daily and Xinhua News Agency.Based on the Attitude System of Martin and White's Appraisal Theory and Aristotle's Classical Rhetorical Theory,we study the rhetorical persuasion function of attitudinal resources to reveal how dominating prosodic model,intensifying prosodic model and saturating prosodic model are constructed by attitudinal resources in English news discourse so as to realize three means of persuasion: pathos,ethos and logos.Meanwhile,the distribution of attitudinal resources,the development model of attitudinal prosody and the mechanism of rhetorical function in the “Belt and Road Initiative” English news about Europe,Asia,Africa and Latin American at each discourse stage are also summarized.The study has found that:(1)English news discourses often open and elaborate with judgment resources,explaining and providing background with appreciation resources,and finally presenting appraisal with affect resources.(2)Attitudinal prosody usually begins with the dominating model to lay prosodic tone,forming echo from multiple appraisal notes,then intensifying prosodic model used to raise scale,turn up volume,and finally saturating prosodic model employed to incorporate the appraisal attitude into the end of discourse.(3)Ethos can be mainly realized by judgment resources through dominating attitudinal prosody;logos by appreciation resources through intensifying attitudinal prosody;and pathos by affect resources through saturating attitudinal prosody.(4)The “Belt and Road Initiative” Englishnews about China and Europe attaches more importance to the rhetorical function of ethos persuasion;about China-Asia and China-Latin America news,it focuses on the rhetorical function of logos persuasion;about China-Africa news,it lays stress on the rhetorical function of pathos persuasion.This study not only enriches the discourse research of the “Belt and Road Initiative” English news from the perspective of linguistics,but also can improve the readers' appreciation of the news discourse.Through the objective representation of the news and insight into the stance of the discourse,it also helps to improve the writing ability of news authors with the use of attitudinal resources to realize rhetorical functions.