| Police brutality news refers to a kind of news that reporting police unnecessary,excessive and unlawful violence towards unarmed people or the weak groups who didn’t gravely against the law or assaulted others.In recently years,America police brutality has frequently happened and heatedly discussed in news.Appropriately reporting of police brutality news not only maintains social stability,but also establishes a good image of nation.Therefore,it is a practical meaning to make a study on police brutality news.Selecting 45 pieces of American police brutality news from ABC News,CNN News and FOX News,this thesis hopes to observe Appraisal resources in police brutality news and answers the following questions.Firstly,what are the news main concerns about police brutality in America? Secondly,how did Appraisal resources distribute in American police brutality news? Thirdly,how are the interpersonal meaning reflected in American police brutality News based on Appraisal theory?Through analyzing its’ data after manual annotation of UAM Corpus tool,this thesis concludes that(1)American police brutality news mainly concerns about others’ statements.Engagement resources are significantly employed in American police brutality news,accounting for 77% in total of Appraisal system.While Attitude resources are almost the same as Graduation resources,accounting for 12% and 11%.Using a great number of Engagement resources indicates that American police brutality news more earnest with fact checking.(2)In the system of Attitude,Affect resources are frequently used in American police brutality news,of which frequently used Unhappy resources and Insecurity resources.Negative Attitude resources reflect the negative interpersonal meaning,which can real that American news reporters hold a negative attitude towards these kinds of events.(3)In Engagement system,Hetergloss resources take a great number which is 835,while Monogloss resources are only 20.Analyzing the great difference of these two resources,we found that police brutality news mainly introduces others’ opinions and uses many Dialogue Contraction resources to avoid an antagonism with readers.(4)In Graduation system,Force resources take a great proportion,accounting for 90% in total.Unarmed people or the weak groups who didn’t gravely against the law or assaulted others are in a disadvantageous situation by contrast police are in an advantageous situation.Quantification resources can reflect this huge gab,which makes readers have a same emotion and feeling with news reporters.According to these distributions of each sub-system in Appraisal system,news reporters can achieve interpersonal meaning which aligns with readers.Therefore,in theoretic,this thesis not only enriches the research of Appraisal theory,but also provides a perspective of the study of American police brutality news.Practically,this thesis can show a overall comprehension of how did American news report the event of police brutality. |
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