| Appraisal Theory proposed by Martin and his colleagues is an approach to explore the evaluative meaning of discourses. Appraisal Theory is concerned with types of attitude, usage of engagement and graduation of feelings. The theory is traceable to the Halliday’s interpersonal meaning system. This newly developed theory consists of three categories: Attitude, Engagement and Graduation. However, most of the researchers focus their attention on discourse analysis, pointing at writing language. Similar research has rarely been found as regards film language, and even more scarcely to analyze the appraisal resources in documentaries.Against such a research background, this study intends to analyze the appraisal resources in The Chinese Are Coming, a documentary produced by BBC. It is hoped that our research can make people feel more related to the mechanism and appraisal functions in documentaries and thus have a better understanding of China’s national image in The Chinese Are Coming. For this purpose, this study seeks to answer three research questions:(1) What are the distributions of attitude resources in the documentary and how are these attitude resources adopted to construct national image of China?(2) What are the distributions of engagement resources in the documentary and how are these engagement resources adopted to construct national image of China?(3) What are the distributions of graduation resources in the documentary and how are these graduation resources adopted to construct national image of China?This study is a tentative analysis of appraisal resources of The Chinese Are Coming under the framework of appraisal system. This study employs the mixed design of quantitative and qualitative approaches. In the study of this thesis, quantitative approach is adopted to describe and analyze the distributions and frequencies. The descriptive statistics analysis will be performed by categorizing the identified appraisal resources via UAM CorpusTool and presenting the major findings by UAM CorpusTool and Excel.Then qualitative approach is applied to analyze the results obtained by means of UAM CorpusTool and as well interprets different realizations of appraisal resources in the target texts.The data analysis generated the following results: Firstly, in the domain of Attitude, there are a great number of appreciation resources distributing in The Chinese Are Coming, its proportion is59.46%of the total attitude resources. As for Appreciation, reaction resources take up70.85%of appreciation resources. In terms of Affect, satisfaction resources rank the first, taking up33.98%of the total affect resources. While in the judgement resources, the number of social sanction resources taking up71.42%of the total judgement resources is much more than that of social esteem. In the whole attitude resources, positive attitude resources are more than negative ones. Explicit ones account for94.17%of affect resources,100%of judgement resources and94.62%of appreciation resources respectively. The documentary applies a lot of positive appreciation resources to tell the audience the wonderful views, rich natural resources of Africa and the hard work of Chinese, which admits the good qualities of Chinese and also accentuates the China’s destroy of such magnificent nature resources. China with rapid development needs extensive Africa market and huge economic interests drive a large number of Chinese to Africa; but because of overmuch emphasis on the economic benefits and development, people may ignore the protection of the environment. By using appreciation resources, it is to arouse the shared opinions from the audiences to construct the solidarity. And positive resources are easier to be accepted by the audiences, by the extensive use of positive attitude resources, the documentary builds solid relationship with the audiences and expresses attitudes in clear, unambiguous ways.Secondly, in the domain of Engagement, the thesis finds that contractive resources taking part of75.31%of the total engagement resources are much more than expansive ones. In terms of Contractive, proclaim resources holding54.10%of contractive resources take a larger part. As for Expansive, entertain ones take up64.29%of expansive resources. Engagement resources make the documentary address more dialogic from the perspectives of American, Chinese and African, etc, which helps to objectively describe a complex and all-round national image of China. The documentary employs more contraction resources to fend off the alternative voices, thus presents its’own propositions as warrantable and persuasive, and aligns the audience.Thirdly, in the domain of Graduation, it is found that there are much more force resources holding88.01%of the total graduation resources than those of focus resources. As for Force, qualification resources taking up54.73%of total force resources are used more often than intensification ones. And in terms of Focus resources, sharpen resources account for50.85%of the total focus resources. Words related to degree, number, extent of time and space are easily used to emphasize the meanings. And fuzzy words are usually avoided except in expressing feelings. Thus there are more qualification resources and sharpen resources in the documentary. These graduation resources emphasize the rapid development of China, and also reflect the misgivings of western developed country.All these appraisal resources construct a complex and controversial national image of China. This thesis might provide a new approach for the study of documentary by exploring appraisal functions in The Chinese Are Coming. The major findings generated from this study may have some pedagogical implications:from the perspective of the teachers, during the process of English teaching, the teacher should show the video of related documentaries according to the teaching content, and pause the video constantly when interpretations are needed. Then with the help of Appraisal Theory, teachers should help students understand documentaries better from the aspects of value orientation, lexical choice, cross-cultural communication, etc. From the perspective of the students, students could learn cultural connotations and express their special expressions of culture via making use of documentaries. And they also are able to take advantage of Appraisal Theory when they utilize documentaries from the western media, especially from documentaries with bias and prejudice. |
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