An Analysis Of Interpersonal Meaning Of Engagement Resources In English Editorial:an Appraisal Approach

Appraisal Theory is the new lexico-grammatical framework for studying interpersonal meaning in Systemic Functional Grammar. It makes up the limitation that Systemic Functional Linguistics only explores interpersonal function from mode and modality, which makes the study of interpersonal meaning stage a new phase. Appraisal Theory is concerned with the way how speakers or writers employ appraisal resources to express attitude and instance, make the judgment and apprehension, negotiate with listeners or readers and ultimately change listeners’or readers’attitude. Appraisal system includes three sub-systems:Attitude, Engagement and Graduation. Engagement system refers to a series of lexico-grammatical resources which indicate whether speakers or writers tend to negotiate with different instances or other voices. In other word, Engagement system is the way that speakers or writers adjust responsibility for their discourse.Editorial discourse, the heart and soul of the newspaper, is one of the most important instruments of news comments. It aims to convey information or opinions; expresses the attitude or stance of media; and influences the viewpoints or ideology of common people. Many scholars both at home and abroad do much research on editorial discourse, which focuses on its structure feature or stylistic features, however the study of interpersonal meaning of engagement resources from the Appraisal Theory is relatively limited. Within the Engagement system, the thesis attempts to explore the characteristic of engagement values in English editorials, find out the distribution features of engagement resources in the three parts of editorials: the introduction part, the body part and the conclusion part, and explain how these resources are employed to realize the interpersonal meaning through negotiation and alignment with readers.In this thesis twenty English editorials used as corpus are chosen randomly from two American authoritative newspapers:The Washington Post and The New York Times, ten articles from each. With the help of UAM corpus tool, both quantitative and qualitative research approaches are adopted to make a detailed analysis. It can be seen clearly from the statistic analysis that engagement values widely exist in English editorials and engagement resources under dialogic contraction (49.62%) and dialogic expansion (50.38%) are nearly at the same extent; the editorial writers prefer to employ Disclaim resources accounting for45.11%and Entertain taking up33.83%and other engagement resources are relatively less used. Besides, there are also differences of distribution of engagement resources in each part of editorials. In the introduction part of editorials, Disclaim resources (60.71%) are employed frequently. In the body part, Disclaim resources (43.09%) Entertain resources (33.88%) and Attribute (18.43%) resources are frequently used. In the conclusion part, Disclaim (37.98%) and Entertain (50.35%) are preferred by the editorial writers. The realization of interpersonal function of English editorials is mainly through dialogic contraction and dialogic expansion. Dialogic contraction is the strategy of alignment through challenge to alternative positions and dialogic expansion is the strategy of alignment through tolerance for alternative positions.This thesis employs the Appraisal Theory to explore the interpersonal meaning of English editorials. It not only offers a new theoretical perspective for the research on interpersonal meaning, but also provides a tentative model for the study of other types of discourse from Engagement system. What’s more, it has pedagogical implications for students to realize the role of appraisal values in the process of reading and writing.