The Study Of The Language Of Evaluation In English Political Editorial Discourse

Considered as the extension of interpersonal meta-function of SystemicFunctional Linguistics (Li Zhanzi,2001), Appraisal theory originates from1990s.Mainly based on the lexical-grammatical level, appraisal theory which focuses onattitudinal negotiation in discourse provides a theoretical framework for discourseanalysis. Appraisal theory covers three subsystems: Attitude, Engagement andGraduation. This theory/system concentrates on the writer’s or speaker’s positive ornegative attitude to persons, places, entities, events, phenomena and the ways inwhich the writer or speaker conveys his or her attitudes and positions (Wang Zhenhua2001).Editorial is ranked as a characterized journalistic comment which is a particularstyle and is full of evaluation resources. At present, very few researches on stylisticfeatures of editorials are on the basis of the Appraisal theory. This thesis tries tointerpret the editorial style from the perspective of attitude evaluation and engagementevaluation and attempts to prove the significances of appraisal resources in therealization of objectiveness and persuasion of English political editorials. All the datasare selected at random from Washington Post and People’s Daily in China, which areall concerned with the international political issues during the year between2012and2013. And in order to achieve the above goals, this thesis puts forward two researchquestions: One is what distributive features of appraisal resources arereflected in English Political Editorial Discourses (EPED); the other is how theevaluative resources contribute to the realization of objectiveness as well aspersuasion of EPED.According to the analysis and discussion, we can make the followingconclusions:1) Within attitude subsystem in the EPED, Judgment resources enjoy the mostnumber in the EPED, the second is Appreciation, and Affect is the least in that theemphasis of EPED is to evaluate or judge political events or people’s behaviors ratherthan their feelings or moods. Secondly, among the EPED, there are more negativeattitudes than positive attitudes. Meanwhile, the values of social esteem are muchmore preferred by editorialists rather than the social sanction.2) Under the heading of engagement, the ten English Political Editorialists tendto apply a number of engagement resources in constructing the text, constructinginteraction with readers and persuading the readers to align with them. Under Engagement subsystem, the author discovers that more dialogistic resources arepreferred by editorialists.The findings and conclusions of this thesis make contribution to the teaching ofcritical reading in that it enables students to grasp the stance and attitudes ofeditorialists better with the guidance of appraisal resources. And this thesisdemonstrates that appraisal system can be adopted as a suitable tool to examine anddiscuss editorials.The appraisal theory provides a new perspective for the study of editorialdiscourses and the significances of this study are listed as follows:1) It can help broaden the research scope of Appraisal Theory by adopting it tothe study of EPED since no research has applied it to study the realization of thefunction in EPED.2) It can help facilitate readers to understand EPED profoundly and precisely.3) It can help furnish editorialists some valuable suggestions about how to realizethe objectiveness and persuasion of EPED and therefore to improve their editorialwritings.