| The French word "genre", originally meaning "kind" or "class", is used in Chinese for different kinds of literature works, such as novel, prose, and poetry. Bakhtin is the first to introduce this word to non-literature areas, referring to all text types, such as promotional discourse, academic reports, and legal documents. Chinese scholars translated genre as Yulei, Wenlei, Ticai, etc. James Martin, from the perspective of functional linguistics, defined genre as a staged, goal-oriented social process, realized through strategic utilization of language resources. Each genre has its social function, and it is the schematic structure formed through communication and social activity.The Chinese web news commentary is a newly born genre. It is a news genre that analyzes and comments on the important news and puts forward judgments on behalf of the news institution or the writer.The current research findings on the Chinese web news commentary mainly come from journalism and media scholars. Their major focus is on the topic selection, editing, web interactive technology, web forum management, and so on. So far, it seems unlikely to find any research results concerning the generic study of the Chinese web news commentary from the linguistic perspective. This dissertation intends to fill this gap with the help of the systemic functional linguistics theory and discourse analysis theories, and the research results in the field of journalism and communication.The major contributions of this research: (1) In the light of the newest development of Systemic Functional Grammar, it works our the generic structure of the Chinese web news commentary, the ordering of the compulsory and optional elements, and their functions. (2) It describes and analyzes the headline structure, the transitivity resources and the cohesive devices of the genre for finding how they help realize the communicative goal. (3) The evaluative resources are found to be prosodic throught the texts, and they contract the stance or the voice of the writer. The writer strategically mediates intersubjective relationship with the readers by adjusting the evaluative resources for better interaction with the reader, and for modifing ideology.The first chapter is an introduction, which summarizes the current development of the Chinese web news commentary and the generic research. It also introduces the research focus and research significance. It describes the research model, the procedures, and the data. The second chapter focuses on the theoretical foundations of the current research, including systemic functional linguistics on language as social practice, the theory of discourse and discourse structure, genre analysis theory, the appraisal theory, the inter-textuality theory, and the domestic and international media language research. In the light of these theories, this dissertation observes and analyzes the Chinese web news commentary and probes into its rhetoric potential. The third chapter, based on the systemic functional linguistics theory of generic structure potential, puts forward the generic structure of the Chinese web news commentary. By means of a pilot study of a random sample, the researcher describes the main features of each semantic section of the text. The fourth chapter discusses the generic features of the web news commentary. Based on data statistics, the researcher analyzes the title, the transitivity structure, and the coherence and cohesion. The fifth chapter studies the appraisal resources of the genre based on the appraisal theory, since both obligatory and optional elements are functional in realizing the goal of the text by the strategic use of lexico-grammatical resources. The researcher focuses on the function of monogloss and heterogloss, the distribution and function of the attitude resources, and the coordination of graduation resources. The sixth chapter is the conclusion. The researcher puts forward the communicative property of the web news commentary: it comes from ideology and influences ideology in reverse. The rhetorical potential of the genre is formed by the discourse semantics, the discourse structure and the discourse potential in constructing meaning and the value relationships of the writer/reader and the text. The dissertation finally concludes that the text has potential in influencing, strengthening or challenging the assumption, belief, affect and attitude of the reader, and finally naturalizing the writer's view in the ideology.The current research intends to explain the reason for the current rapid growth of the Chinese web news commentary from a linguistic perspective, by analyzing the generic structure, and semantic resources, and revealing the rhetorical potential. This research is significant in finding the influence of social context on the construction of texts and in probing into the counter impact of the web news commentary on society. The research results will lead the media to a better awareness of the social impact of the genre, and a more appropriate control of its development. It will also arouse more attention to genre analysis from the language researchers, and to the semantic power of lexico-grammatical resources in news genres from the journalistic experts.
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