| With the development of technologies, a variety of ways are available for people to know the world. Reading newspapers, listening to news broadcast and searching information on the Internet have already become an indispensable part of people’s life. Journalistic discourse reflects society and culture. As a popular information access, new reports are required to be objective and truthful. However, the reporter’s attitude and ideology can always be found in the reports, which can have a great impact on readers. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze news reports from the perspective of critical discourse analysis, so as to uncover and identify the stance and attitude maintained by the news reports and reveal the ideologies embedded in language.As a new approach to linguistics, Appraisal Theory develops out of the interpersonal metafunction of language within the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics. In the view of Martin (2000), Appraisal Theory deals with the linguistic resources through which the writer or speaker can convey their attitudes, get involved in propositions and grade the assessment of meanings. The appraisal system includes three sub-systems:attitude, engagement, and graduation. In this thesis, the engagement resources are chosen as the subject matter under discussion. The engagement system refers to the meanings which construe for a text a heteroglossic background of prior utterances, alternative opinions and anticipated responses. It is further divided into dialogic contraction and expansion. This is concerned with how intersubjective relation of alignment and disalignment is built and negotiated to perform rhetorical functions. Headings like modality, polarity, evidentiality, hedging/boosting, etc. are usually indicated in this kind of resources.Based on the engagement sub-system of Appraisal Theory, together with Fairclough’s three dimensions of Critical Discourse Analysis, namely, description, interpretation and explanation, the present thesis adopts a quantitative and qualitative method to analyze news reports on "2009UN Climate Change Conference", collected from American newspapers. The current study is conducted at three levels. At the textual level, the engagement resources are analyzed to explore the linguistic features of the data under discussion; at the discursive level, news reports are discussed from the perspective of intertextuality, including news source and reporting mode; at the socio-cultural level, lexicogrammatical and structural choices are explained so as to uncover the hidden ideology.According to data analysis from the above-mentioned three levels, it is concluded that news reports are not as just and objective as they claim to be. Instead, in reporting on climate change, American newspapers incorporate ideologies from the environmental to the economic and even political aspects into discourse.It is of vital importance to make a systematic analysis of news reports from the perspective of Appraisal Theory. By integrating Appraisal Theory into CDA analysis, the ideologies behind language use can be revealed. It is concluded from the present study that news reports are not as objective and fair as they claim to be. Specifically, concerning the issue of climate change, American newspapers convey the American ideologies of environmental, economic and political interests into the discourse.The significance of the study is threefold. Firstly, it has proved the feasibility of applying Appraisal Theory in CDA. Secondly, the research scope of CDA is extended. In addition to such ideology-embedded journalistic discourse as racism, politics and gender discrimination, the seemingly neutral topics such as climate change can also be included under critical scrutiny. Finally, it is expected to shed some light on foreign language teaching and learning so that learners can have a better understanding of journalistic discourse. |
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