Distribution Of Appraisal Resources In English Newspaper Editorial Texts

Editorials are an important kind of comments to affect the public. They conveyinformation, but their main purpose is to analyze news events, express opinions,indoctrinate the public with their viewpoints (郭可,1993) so as to influence thereaders‘ideology and to even have an impact on the readers‘social behavior so thatthe readers are persuaded to take actions to change the social facts. Zhao Zhenyu (赵振宇,2006) points out that editorials play an important role in passing opinions andinformation, steering public opinions, accelerating the social progress, andestablishing a harmonious society. Editorials are the banner of indicating thenewspapers‘political purpose, thus the newspapers must have editorials so that theycan posses the complete political value (刘大保,2003:1). Therefore, the presentstudy maintains that editorials are worthy of our study.As an important form of news comments, in representing the newspapers tointerpret news events, and to express opinions and attitudes, editorials are supposed toemploy abundant appraisal resources. In expressing opinions and attitudes, thedistribution of appraisal resources is expected to present certain patterns. The patternof distribution of English editorials will exert great influence on the realization ofsocial goals of English editorials. From the current literature on editorials, we findthat there are some studies on the distribution of appraisal resources of Englisheditorials. However, the previous studies do not cover all the aspects of AppraisalSystems. The present study holds that unveiling the distribution patterns of appraisalresources in English editorials is of great significance in the following ways: firstly, itis of great help for us to understand and interpret English editorials; secondly, it is ofgreat importance for us to grasp the intentions and political purposes of Englisheditorials; thirdly, it can provide valuable suggestions for the writing and teaching ofEnglish editorials; lastly, it can provide help for English learners to produce goodpersuasive writings. In order to figure out the distribution patterns of appraisalresources in English editorials, the present study employs the Appraisal Systems asthe theoretical framework to analyze30English editorials from6English newspapers,which are The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times in USA, The Guardianand The Telegraph in Britain, The Australian and The Herald Sun in Australia.In order to discover the distribution patterns of appraisal resources in Englisheditorials, the present study aims to address the following research questions:(1)What and how appraisal resources are deployed by English newspapereditorials to fulfill their purposes?(2)What kind of voice do editorials adopt? Who takes the evaluativeresponsibility? What kind of Appraisal mode do editorials make use of?(3) What and how appraisal resources are employed across different schematicstructures?(4)What prosodic features of English editorials are like? What evaluativeparameters occur in English editorials? What kind of evaluative metaphors doEnglish editorials adopt? The major findings of the present study are summarized as follows:(1) English editorials employ plenty of appraisal resources, among which thereare392Attitude resources,573Engagement resources and420Graduation resources.Within Attitude resources, Judgement and Appreciation resources occur mostfrequently with almost the same frequency. Comparatively speaking, Affect resourcesoccur less frequently. The reason for this phenomenon is that editorials mainlyfunction to comment on the people‘s social behavior and news events and theirevaluative target is major news facts and social events. Therefore, English editorialstend to make use of more Judgement and Appreciation resources instead of Affectresources. Affect resources occur more frequently in the editorials which mainly aimto comment on the people. As for the grammatical realization of Affect resources,most of Affect resources are realized through―process‖. Mental processes have thegreat potential to serve as the outlet for expressing our emotions and attitudes. Mostof Affect resources are inscribed ones. Positive Attitude resources and negativeAttitude resources occur with the same frequency. Within Judgement resources,positive Judgement resources and negative Judgement resources occur with the samefrequency. The resources of social esteem occur more frequently than the resources ofsocial sanction. To be specific, capacity, propriety and tenacity resources occur mostfrequently. Among these Judgement resources, there are only14invoked ones, whichshows that English editorials prefer to use inscribed Judgement resources. WithinAppreciation resources, quality and valuation resources occur most frequently.Positive Appreciation resources outnumber negative ones. On the whole,6Englishnewspapers employ more dialogic expansion resources. Among573Engagementresources, Entertain, Counter, Deny and Attribute resources occur most frequently.Within420Graduation resources, there are383Force resources and37Focusresources. Obviously, Force resources far outnumber Focus resources.(2) English editorials employ a certain number of non-authorial Attituderesources. Although, non-authorial Attitude resources occur less frequently thanauthorial ones, they do lend support to the argumentation of English editorials. To bespecific, the non-authorial Attitude resources render the argumentation of Englisheditorials to be more credible and objective. Among Attribution resources,Acknowledge resources occur with the highest frequency, which indicates thateditorial writers tend to share some evaluative responsibility in making comments.Most of Attribution resources are personal ones. As for the status of Attributionsresources, most of them enjoy high status. With respect to the textual integration, mostAttribution resources are assimilated into the editorial texts so as to reduce thedistance between external voices and authorial voices. To sum up, English editorialstend to employ high status personal assimilated source types to seek support for theirargumentation.(3) English editorials employ a large number of modality resources, whichincludes will, can, would, should, could, must, may and might. These modalityresources belong to Entertain resources. The use of these modality resources createsdialogic space for different attitude and opinions so that more potential readers can beattracted to participate in the dialogue and negotiation with editorial writers. (4) The invoked Appraisal resources are mainly realized through ideationalmeanings and Graduation resources.(5) Three kinds of prosodic realization all occur in English editorials. Amongthem, saturation occurs more frequently than intensification and domination.(6) In English editorials, there occur twelve evaluative parameters, which arecomprehensibility, emotivity, expectedness, genuineness, importance, necessity,possibility, reliability, causality, sourcing (evidentiality), sourcing (style), and mentalstate.(7) There are7types of evaluative metaphors in30English editorials, which arepossibility substituting desirability, possibility substituting normativity, usualitysubstituting desirability, expectability substituting desirability, normativitysubstituting desirability, normativity substituting usuality, and importance substitutingnormativity.