An Analysis Of Appraisal Resources In Official Statements During Trade Frictions

Since China established diplomatic relations with the EU, there has been many economic and trade agreements signed between the two parties, which help develop a deep and healthy bilateral relation. According to the latest trade data, the EU has remained one of the largest trading partners to China for ten years. In 2014, the bilateral trade volume between China and the EU reached $615.1 billion, which accounts for14.3% of China’s total trade volume. However, with a bigger part China is going to play in international trade, more trade investigation cases against China are bound to pop up.Therefore, it is of pivotal importance for us to understand how to handle trade frictions more effectively.This thesis collected 26 official statements issued by the Ministry of Commerce and the Office of Fair Trade of People’s Republic of China, and 15 official statements issued by the EU. All official statements are issued regarding the Solar Panel Case in 2013. The author intends to adopt Appraisal Theory and Persuasion Mechanism proposed by Aristotle to analyze these official statements in the expectation of revealing both China’s and the EU’s tendency in choosing appraisal resources and persuasion mechanisms. To be more specific, as far as appraisal resources are concerned, because China and the EU intend to achieve different purposes when issuing official statements, they tend to adopt different kinds of appraisal resources. For EU, the most frequently used appraisal resource is the Engagement resource, whereas for China, Engagement resource is the least frequently used resource. It is the Attitude and Graduation resources that are most frequently adopted by China. As far as persuasion mechanism is concerned, because of their different cultural background, China tends to use appraisal resources to realize Pathos and Ethos, whereas the EU tends to use appraisal resources to realize Ethos and Logos.This research is meaningful in the following aspects: first of all, although the official statements are separately issued by China and the EU, the author regards them as a conversation. In this conversation, both China and the EU try to persuade the other to make decisions that are beneficial to their own. Secondly, as for the research on Sino-EUtrade frictions, most researchers conduct their studies from such macro aspects as its legal issues, resolving mechanism or other macro aspects as how to handle trade frictions effectively in terms of policy, economy and so on. Few researches have been conducted on such micro aspects as language. This thesis integrated both Appraisal Theory and Persuasion Mechanism in order to explore patterns occurring in the official statements. In this way, the author is able to provide constructive suggestions for better handling future trade frictions. Lastly, through the integration of Appraisal Theory and Persuasion Mechanism, this thesis further proved that appraisal resources can be employed to realize persuasion.