| Identity plays a vital role in people’s life.Over the last decades,study on identity construction has been receiving increasing attention from scholars in various fields.And there has been a tendency for interdisciplinary research.Due to the shift in terms of the theoretical base of identity study from essentialism to social constructivism,more and more scholars have realized that identity is constructed in the process of social practices and discursive practices,rather than fixed or predetermined,thus it is multiple,dynamic,and context-dependent.In the region of linguistics,studies have been geared toward the relationships between identity and discourse,with an attempt to investigate the influence of language use on constructing identity in certain contexts.Recent years have witnessed a heated discussion on identity construction among linguists,from various perspectives and targeting various types of discourse.However,the statements of the Secretary-General of the United Nations(UNSG)are still seldom studied.Fewer linguistic studies have been conducted in terms of the UNSG’s messages.The United Nations(UN)is the intergovernmental international organization with the largest scale and the highest authority.The UNSG is the chief executive officer,symbolizing the visions of the UN and representing the fundamental interests of people worldwide.Each UNSG would define particular roles and set priorities based on the global context during the term of office.Therefore,the statements of the UNSG have great significance in promoting international cooperation and fostering sustainable development.Message,as a typical kind of public statement,is delivered during some ceremonial events to express encouragement,gratitude,congratulation,condolence,etc.Given the above,it is of academic value in analyzing the messages addressed by the UNSG Guterres in some important global events.According to Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics,there are three metafunctions of language: ideational function,interpersonal function,and textual function.As an extension of the interpersonal function of language,Appraisal Theory,put forward by Martin et al.,is aimed at analyzing the stances and views of the speaker/author in specific contexts through language use,including the adapted stances in texts,the intensity of the feelings involved in communication,and methods used by speakers/writers to construe certain identities for themselves and to dis/align themselves with their audience(Marin & White,2005).Appraisal is regionalized into three major subdomains,attitude,engagement,and graduation.Attitude deals with people’s emotional feelings,evaluations of things,and judgements of behaviors.It is divided into three types feeling,affect,judgement,and appreciation.Since the inception of Appraisal Theory,this theoretical framework has shown its selfcontainment and value in linguistic research.However,research on identity construction in the framework of Attitude System is still relatively rare.In view of the above,the present study attempts to investigate attitudinal resources and identity construction of the UNSG Guterres in his messages within the Attitude system as the theoretical framework and UAM Corpus Tool 6.2e as the analytical tool.The research data consists of 400 pieces of messages delivered by Guterres from January 2017 to October 2022,which are downloaded from the UN official website(https://www.un.org/sg/en/latest/sg/statement).The research is designed to answer the following question:1)What attitudinal resources have been employed by Guterres in his messages?How are they distributed?2)What identities have been constructed by Guterres in his messages? How are they constructed by the attitudinal resources?Based on the results of the quantitative research and the qualitative analysis,the following conclusions could be drawn: 1)A great many attitude resources have been employed by Guterres in his messages,with a total number of 7043.In terms of attitude type,there is a significant difference among the three subtypes.Landing in the first place of frequency is appreciation,with totally 2978 items occupying 42.22%.Judgement is close behind,totaling 2906 items and accounting for 41.23%.Appreciation takes the last place,with only 1169 items taking up 16.57%.In terms of the polarity of attitude,positive resources appear 4755 times,taking up more than two-thirds.Negative resources are relatively less used,totaling 2298 with a proportion of 32.58%.In terms of explicitness,the majority of attitude resources are inscribed directly.There are altogether 6505 items of inscribed evaluation,accounting for92.23%.While only 7.77% of the evaluations are invoked in an implicit way.2)For a better approach to the satisfaction of communicative needs in delivering messages,Guterres has constructed multiple identities,the most representative ones among which are: a global solidarity embracer,a social contract renewer,a farsighted planner,and a promoter of a multilateral system anchored within the UN.All subtypes of Attitude System are conducive to the process of discursive identity construction.Such results verify that identity is diverse in nature and identity construction is dynamic and discourse-based.The present study has the following implications: First,it has verified the effectiveness and explanatory power of Appraisal Theory and thus could be applied to linguistic research.It is a complete and well-established framework.Secondly,this thesis further demonstrates the feasibility of using Appraisal Theory as a theoretical foundation in study on identity construction.Meanwhile,the perspective adopted in the study to analyze identity and its construction is inspiring to some extent.And it can be a testament to discursive identity construction.In addition,the study,embracing detailed analysis of attitude resources and identity construction in Guterres’ messages,could provide some reference for readers to interpret the stances and images of the UNSG.Thus,it could conduce to readers’ better understanding of the visions of the UN,and foster the promotion of the UN’s image.Moreover,the study could raise readers’ awareness in maintaining peace,dignity,and equality and motivate them to play a role in constructing a healthy planet through sustainable development.There are still deficiencies in spite of the above-mentioned significance.To begin with,despite the assistance of UAM Corpus Tool as an analytical tool to ensure the objectivity of the research,it would be still inevitable that the results and discussion are affected by certain subjective factors.Future studies are suggested to apply methods that are more objective and accurate.Moreover,the research scope can be widened to cover more research data and take different approaches,thus making more comprehensive analysis of discursive construction of identity Lastly,the summary of Guterres’ identities is far from enough and the classification is not clear.More studies are expected to analyze identity construction based on reasonable classification. |
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