An Analysis Of Affectual Resources In The News Report Of China Daily About Wenchuan Earthquake

At 14:28 on May 12, in 2008, a disastrous earthquake attacked Wenchuan county, which shocked the whole China. This thesis is to analyze affectual resources in the news report of China Daily about Wenchuan earthquake with Affect sub-system of Appraisal Theory. Going over all of the previous studies on the news report, the author notices that news reports, especially the news report about earthquakes is seldom researched from the perspective of Appraisal Theory, let alone affect sub-system in attitude system. In general, two genres of the news report are common to journalistic English - hard news and soft news. The former includes reports of accidents, conflicts, crimes, announcements, discoveries and other events which have occurred or come to light since the previous issue of newspaper or program, while the latter is divided into two categories of the feature story and brief soft news. As is found by the author, in soft news, especially the feature story of soft new, many affectual resources are used to make the feature story more vivid. Therefore, in this thesis, the author will mainly focus on an analysis of the feature story of the news report and choose six feature stories as her data base. And through a combination of a qualitative and quantitative study, the data are analyzed to verify the hypotheses that are proposed by the author in her introduction.In light of preliminary observation and research, the hypotheses are proposed as follows: The affectual resources in the feature story about earthquake might not influence its objectivity. Instead, in this special period, the affectual resources may be used to show its functions. With these hypotheses in mind in advance, the current study attempts to concentrate on the following three research questions: (1) Would the affectual resources influence the objectivity of the news report and why? (2) Why do the writers adopt the affectual resources in the feature story and what are their aims? And how do the writers attain their aims? (3) What are the functions of the affectual resources in the feature story about Wenchuan earthquake?Through a further observation and statistical analysis, these hypotheses are validated. Firstly, the affectual resources can not influence the objectivity of the feature story. Because the number of Affect is not quite large, and at average there are more than two affectual resources per 100 words in each of the 6 pieces of the news report; the authorial affect only covers 38.57% of the total number of Affect, meaning that few of the writers' comment or opinion is attached; the writers adopt the affectual resources in such a way that the news is personalized in such special situations. Secondly, the writers adopt more positive and non-authorial affect in the feature story about the big earthquake. The reasons are that the writers want to induce the readers to generate the same emotional responses as they have to care about the victims and stricken areas, and to evoke the sad feeling of the readers so that they can contribute their love and care to the victims and stricken areas; the writers want to encourage people to overcome the difficulties by arousing unity and common efforts in the emergent and harsh period. Thirdly, some kinds of the affectual resources are used more often in the feature story about the big earthquake. Because these resources can be used to display the actual situation of the big earthquake and can show the writers' opinion and affection very well, and the writers, by using these affectual resources, want to arouse people to contribute their love and care to the victims and stricken areas. Finally, there are three functions of affectual resources in the feature story about Wenchuan earthquake: to tell readers the actual condition, to call on readers to learn from the heroes and imitate their deeds, and to evoke readers to contribute their help to the victims and stricken areas.This thesis is divided into five chapters. Chapter One introduces the object, the purpose, the significance and the organization of the study. Besides, the author proposes her hypotheses, states clearly the methodology she uses, the data she collects and the reason for the choice of the data, and raises some research questions that are going to be answered in the following chapters. Chapter Two presents a literature review of recent studies on news reports at home and abroad and an overview of the news report as well. Chapter Three introduces the theoretical framework, based on Appraisal Theory, for analyzing English news report on Wenchuan earthquake. This chapter highlights attitude system of Appraisal Theory, in particular, affect sub-system in attitude system which serves as the theoretical foundation of the thesis. Chapter Four is the main body of the thesis. The common features of the affectual resources such as positive/negative affect and authorial/ non-authorial affect etc. are summarized, and the functions of these resources in the news report about the earthquake are analyzed. Chapter Five summaries the main findings presented in the previous chapters and some implications and limitations waiting to be resolved are also put forward on a further study of similar subjects.