Discourse Analysis Of China Daily's Disaster News Reports: An Appraisal Approach

Each year, disasters like earthquakes, landslides, volcanic eruptions, flood, cyclones and other catastrophic events kill thousands of people and destroy billions of dollars of property. Many countries that experienced disasters in the past attach great importance to the role of media,as they know that media can play a vital role in informing people of the latest news of disasters, facilitating governments'disaster-relief work and arousing people's sympathy towards victims.However, the disaster news discourse yet hasn't drawn much attention from researchers in the linguistic field. Only in recent years did a few researchers, most of whom are Chinese, begin to show interests in it. This study selects 10 front-page headlines about the 1998 flood and 10 front-page headlines about the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake from China Daily, and makes a comparison between the appraisal resources of the two data on the basis of Appraisal theory, aiming to find out the general appraisal features of China Daily's disaster news reports and to explore whether the appraisal resources would change with time. It also tries to find out the determiners of the general appraisal features and the causes of the changes.After analyzing and comparing the two data, this thesis finds that the most prominent features shared by China Daily's disaster news reports are that the Affect accounts for the least part in the Attitudinal resources and all of them are non-authorial; the Attitudinal meaning is usually conveyed by invoked Judgments and most Attitudinal resources are positive ones; the"neutral"Acknowledge accounts for more than half of the Engagement resources; Quantification, especially the sub-category Number is the most frequently used Graduation device in disaster news reports and most Graduation resources are up-scale ones.This thesis also finds that great changes in disaster news reports have taken place over the 10 years from 1998 to 2008. The most prominent changes are that the instances of Attitudinal resources and Engagement resources, and the proportions of the Affect resources and the negative Attitudinal resources are increased in the 2008 earthquake news reports, compared with the 1998 flood news reports; the appraisers in the 2008 earthquake news reports are far more diversified than those in the 1998 flood news reports.Finally, this thesis reveals that the Reporter Voice, the demands for objectivity and the press policy are the determiners of those general appraisal features; and the weakening of the government's political control, the return of the sense of journalistic professionalism, the enhancement of the public's awareness of the right to know and the diversification of the way to get information are the causes for the changes in the disaster news reports.The significances of this study are that it demonstrates the applicability and explanatory power of Appraisal theory and casts some light on how to report disaster news,especially on how to deal with attitudes in the disaster news so as to embody humane care to the victims and yet keep the news reports objective.