A Contrastive Analysis Of Transitivity And Attitude Resources Between English And Chinese Sports News Reports Of London Olympic Games

Three metafunctions of language are introduced by Halliday, namely ideationalfunction, interpersonal function and textual function. The theory of metafunctionsprovides effective theoretical system for discourse analysis. Appraisal theory wasfirst introduced by Martin, which further provides more developmental theoreticalframework to interpersonal function study and provides a new development directionfor systemic-functional linguistics. Appraisal theory is composed of threesub-systems that are attitude, engagement and graduation. Attitude can be dividedinto affect, judgment and appreciation. Based on the three metafunctions andappraisal theory as theoretical framework, this paper respectively chooses30Chinese and30English sports news reports from People‘s Daily website and foreignfamous website as database, conducts quantitative and qualitative analysis to addresson questions.This paper is composed of six chapters, the first chapter introduces researchbackground, research meaning, theory framework and research questions. Chaptertwo is literature review, presents previous studies on attitudes from abroad and athome, and presents three-metafunctions and appraisal system theoretical framework.Chapter three presents research methodology, contains data collection andresearching method. Chapter four is data analysis. Chapter five is case study,presents analysis and explanations result of transitivity system and evaluativeresources in selected English and Chinese sports news reports. Chapter six isconclusion, includes summary of major findings, limitation of study and futureresearch direction.The key findings through this study are as following:(1)In terms of transitivity system, material process is the major process in bothEnglish and Chinese media reports. Followed by relational process, behavioralprocess, mental process, verbal process and existential process, the percentage ofmaterial process in People Daily is higher than that in The Guardian, Chinese mediapay more attention to describe sports event itself to keep the objectivity of newsreports.(2)In terms of attitude appraisal system, English and Chinese media havedifferences in the employment of appraisal strategy. First of all, from the perspective of attitude quantity, English media employ more attitudinal resources, next, from theperspective of attitude source, English sports reports are full of more authorialaffects, while Chinese sports reports use more non-authorial affect resources, last,from the perspective of distribution of attitude resource, the percentage of judgmentand appreciation are more than affect in Both English and Chinese sports reports,Chinese sports journalists employ more appreciation, while English sports journalistsuse more judgment, concerning the use of each sub-resources, in Chinese sportsreports journalists employ more social esteem than English sports reports journalists,Chinese media are inclined to use valuation of appreciation, while English media usemore reaction.(3)The major reason of different transitivity system and appraisal strategybetween these two countries is different social cultural value. China is a typicalcollectivism country, which inclines to keep harmonious relationship in society, soChinese journalists always take euphemistic way to make evaluations. While westerncountry cherish individualism, they think highly of speaking freely and always takedirect and open way to convey feelings.