A Contrastive Study Of Attitude Resource In Chinese And English Political Speeches

The study of political speeches has always been a hot field at home and abroad.Most research had been done from the perspectives of systemic functional linguistics,rhetoric,syntax,etc.The Appraisal theory aims to analyze the speakers’ ideas and stances through the speakers’ choice of specific words,and then find out the speakers’ emphasis and the way of constructing interpersonal network.Sothis thesis is hoped to shed some lights on understanding the interpersonal meaning for different symbolic languages and enhancing the language leaner’ s language sensitivity through a contrastive analysis of political speeches of Xi Jinping and Donald Trump.The author selects 20 political speeches from the authorial websites during 2019 to 2020 respectively.With the assistance of UAM Corpus Tools,the author first recognizes the affect,judgment and appreciation resources according to the Appraisal theory and then makes a contrastive study to find out the similarities and differences in using attitude resources between Chinese and American political speeches.Finally,the author analyzes the deep reasons for those differences from the perspectives of linguistics,culture and religion.The results are as follows: Firstly,among the 20 corpus,the proportion of attitude resource in Chinese is 2.1% while English is 2.8%,which indicates that English political speeches use more attitude resources than Chinese political speeches.Secondly,in affect subsystem,an obvious difference lies in un/happiness and dis/inclination resources,the proportion of dis/inclination and un/security resources in Chinese political speeches with 28% and 29.3% are slightly larger than that in English with 18% and25.4%respectively.But in English political speeches,the un/happiness resources occupy a large proportion of 29.4%,which shows that English political speeches emphasize the individual feelings while the Chinese speeches tend to express the expectation and desire from an overall perspective.Thirdly,in judgment subsystem,both Chinese and English political speeches emphasize the capacity resources,which account for 42.2% and 34% respectively.In addition,the proportions of social esteem are larger than that of social sanction in both discourses.So there are still similarities existing in two types of political speeches.Finally,in appreciation subsystem,Chinese political speeches are inclined to use valuation resources with 49.1%,but English political speeches take the reaction ones at an important place,which has the proportion of 40%.From the linguistic,religious and cultural perspectives,the author explores the deep reasons for the differences.Firstly,from the perspective of linguistics,since the two languages are quite different in language expression,the position of Chinese vocabulary is more flexible than that of English words.Due to the fact that English tends to use fixed adjectives as attributives,while Chinese uses adjectives and nouns as attributives in many texts,the whole proportion of attitude resources in Chinese political speeches is less than that in English.Secondly,from the perspective of religious origins,influenced by Buddhism and Taoism culture,Chinese pays more attention to stability and harmony,but American are influenced by Protestant Reformation,so they take individualism and innovation at a very important place.Therefore,Chinese political speeches prefer dis/security,dis/inclination resources,while English political speeches focus on un/happiness,reaction resources.Finally,from the perspective of culture,Chinese culture attaches great importance to the collectivity and the feelings of others,while the Americans are influenced by Renaissance and the Enlightenment in the history.Therefore,Americans attach great importance to protect the individual rights.As a result,there are many reaction,un/happiness resources in English political speeches and more valuation resources in Chinese political speeches.