A Corpus-based Comparative Study Of English News Reports On Shanghai Expo In Chinese And American Newspapers

Appraisal Theory, generally applied for interpreting interpersonal meaning in systemic functional linguistics, focuses on various attitudes which can be negotiated in discourse and explores the underlying ideologies by investigating expressions closely related to points of view. Journalism, claiming to report based on facts, features impartiality, objectiveness and neutrality. However, each news agency serves certain power hierarchy or community, whose reports inevitably reflect its position and ideology. Journalists usually objectify their reports technically, convey their viewpoints and stance skillfully and then influence the readers’attitudes imperceptibly. Appraisal Theory supplies a theoretical framework for news discourse analysis, helps readers be aware of the underlying attitude and stance behind the seemingly objective reports.In this thesis, Corpus approach is employed to study the news reports on Shanghai Expo2010in China Daily and New York Times, both of which have a large circulation, strong influence, and are often regarded as "mouthpiece" of the government. Two corpora, one for China Daily news reports on Shanghai Expo--China Daily Corpus (CDC) and the other for New York Times news reports on Shanghai Expo--New York Times Corpus (NYTC) were established. Anctonc, Wordsmith and Readability Analyzer are adopted to analyze wordlist, keywords, and Appraisal resources in the three subsystems of Appraisal Theory, Attitude, Engagement and Graduation.Major findings from the applied software demonstrate that the text difficulty level in New York Times is lower than that in China Daily while the lexes are richer. This is consistent with the requirements of news to be brief and easily understood.There are similarities and differences in the distribution of resources in Attitude, Engagement and Graduation systems. With respect to the topic choice, China Daily concentrated on the Expo itself, for instance, the preparations, pavilions, celebrations, comments etc. trying to shape a positive image of China and a well-organized Expo. However, New York Times emphasized some negative information like the extravagance and waste of time and money on the "face-lift" operation, the impropriety of some behaviors of Chinese people and poorly-organized Expo.New York Times is one of the major newspapers in the world. Many of its reports on Shanghai Expo are found to be far from being objective, even misleading due to some American bias. This thesis suggests that Chinese English learners should enhance awareness of critical reading, and differentiate the ideologies behind the discourses.