An Appraisal Approach To Attitudes Of CCTV Program Topics In Focus

Mediated discourse has become increasingly powerful in the contemporarylanguage life. As an indispensable part of mediated discourse, news commentary plays asignificant interpersonal and social role in guiding the public opinion and maintainingthe mainstream value. TV news commentary is indispensable for TV media nowadays.It is issued by the language user’s discourse which implies his/her value judgments toexpress the communicative intention intended by the language user and achieve theinterpersonal functions of discourse.The Appraisal Theory, which was first put forward by Martin in the early1990s,has expanded and enriched the scope and application of interpersonal meaning withinsystemic functional linguistics. This theory concentrates on the writer’s or speaker’spositive or negative attitude to persons, places, entities, events, phenomena and theways in which the writer or speaker conveys his or her attitudes and positions. That is tosay, it pays attention to the linguistic resources used for expressing, negotiating andnaturalizing certain inter-subjective and ultimately ideological positions by texts orlanguage users.The thesis makes an attempt at applying Appraisal Theory to the representativeCCTV news comment program Topics in Focus. It attempts to reveal how to realize andembody the attitudinal meanings linguistically through the analysis of different attitudestowards different news and hot topics in the program; meanwhile, by further analyzingthe linguistic strategies of the program, it is hoped to uncover the argumentativefunctions and communicative purposes, and how the audiences be attracted andinfluenced by these functions and purposes.Firstly the three elements of contexts of situation–Field, Mode and Tenor of theprogram Topics in Focus are identified, and then a combination of qualitative andquantitative analytic method is carried out. Through the analysis of the distribution ofappraisal resources and interpersonal functions of the program, the following main findings are naturally concluded: a great variety of attitude resources are applied inCCTV program Topics in Focus, especially the extensive adoption of appreciation andjudgment resources. These different attitudes are mainly displayed explicitly and areclosely related with the function of the program and the language users’ identities andtheir standpoints in the issue; through the application of various negative and positiveattitudes in the program, the communicative intention of punishing evil and promotinggood is well reflected; in the sight of the source of attitude, the language user adoptsextensive different hetero-gloss resources to negotiate and narrow the discrepancy withthe language receivers, then he/she employs mono-gloss resources to attract andpersuade audience; meanwhile, the resources of force-raising and focus-sharpeningeffectively amplify the language users’ voice, and make their position clearer, morereliable and at a strong momentum. Thereby with high persuasiveness, more languagereceivers will be aligned.The study extends the application of Appraisal Theory and proves that it is a verycomprehensive way in the specific genre of Chinese discourses like TV news comments.In addition, it is only through the realization of the interpersonal function of the ChineseTV news commentaries can the social function of the program be achieved, i.e. therealization of conveying information to the public, conducting public opinion function.It is also expected that the linguistic studies on Chinese TV news commentary will beenriched and the social function of mass media studies will be expanded. Moreover,there will be more authentic data and references provided for other Chinese discoursesfrom the appraisal perspective.