An Appraisal-Theoretic Approach To Engagement Resources In English Political Speeches

As a sub-genre of public speaking, the political speech is used by politicians as a weapon to clarify their views, set forth political guidelines, heighten the morale of the audience and denounce their political opponents (Li & Zou, 1997). From the perspective of engagement, this thesis explores how the orator construes his persona, aligns or disaligns the audience and establishes solidarity with the audience. The engagement system mainly includes dialogic expansive resources and the dialogic contractive resources. This thesis reviews the attitude system briefly, for it has the functionality of establishing solidarity with the audience. The author, based on the ideal from Wang Zhenhua (2001), extends attitude from words to clauses. From the perspective of PDA (Positive Discourse Analysis), which is in contrast with CDA, this thesis chooses 20 political speeches by leaders and analyzes how the appraisal resources are employed to make the speech more persuasive, and thus make the world better. The author uses the software - Systemic Coder to measure the distribution of the engagement resources in political speeches and gives explanation accordingly. The result of the thesis is helpful for us to have a better understanding of the distributionof the appraisal resources in the political speeches.There are four chapters in this thesis. Chapter one discusses the development of the public speeches (including political speeches). The research had been about the language features and rhetorical devices in political speeches. After the 19th century, sociology, psychology and linguistics have been applied into the research of oratory. Although the interpersonal meaning of political speeches has been studied by many scholars from the perspective of SFL and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), up to now, there is no systematical research of the appraisal resources, especially the engagement resources in political speeches. Chapter two introduces the theoretical framework of the Appraisal Theory and the rhetorical functionality of engagement resources, including construing stance, construing the putative audience and building solidarity with the audience. Taking advantage of the idea of Wang Zhenhua, the author extends attitude in appraisal system from words to clauses, which is based on...