PDA Of Reporting Speech In Political News Reports From The Perspective Of Appraisal Theory

Reporting speech, a linguistic pattern, is the reporter’s reproduction to the reported person’s speeches by using some kind of reporting mode, and it is used by the reporter to pass the information on to the audience. Now, Academics mainly make researches on reporting speech from the perspectives of Syntax, Functional linguistics, Pragmatics and Cognitive Linguistics. However, scholars’ studies about the interpersonal meaning of the reporting speech are relatively few. Reporting speeches exist in political news report widely. When showing the objectivity of the report by using the reporting speech, reporters reproduce the speech of the reported person. Reporting speech delivers the reported person’s interpersonal meanings, and at the same time it conveys the interpersonal meaning of the reporter. This paper aims to discuss how reporting speech contains and delivers the interpersonal meanings from the perspective of Appraisal Theory.Appraisal Theory is put forward by J.R.Martin(2000), and this theory focuses on various attitudes of interaction and negotiation in the speech, the emotional intensity of the speech, and various engagement methods by which the reporter makes an alliance with readers. Appraisal Theory contains three subsystems, namely attitude, engagement and graduation. Positive discourse analysis is also put forward by J.R.Martin, and it stresses interpreting the speech with a positive attitude. Combining positive discourse analysis, this paper analyzes the reported person’s appraisal resources in the chosen domestic and foreign political news reports’ reporting speeches from the perspective of Appraisal Theory’s three subsystems, namely attitude, engagement and graduation respectively, trying to find out the interpersonal meaning in the reported person’s speech and discussing the methods in which the reporter expresses his interpersonal meaning. The findings of this paper are:1. There are appraisal resources which reflect the interpersonal meanings of the reporter and the reported person in the reporting speeches of political news report. 2. The reporter implicitly expresses his/her interpersonal personal meaning through the use of reporting verb, appositive, attributive clause and reporting modes. For example, reporting verbs such as “stress”, “call on”; appositive such as “Li Wei, an anti-terrorism expert”; attributive clause such as “guidelines that provide the first clear legal definitions” and mixed quotation such as “three evil forces” have developed and changed quickly.3.Reporting speech in political news reports contains ideology and the relationship of power, and it also contains positive elements which are beneficial to the peace and equality of the society and are of constructive significance to the society. For example, the countries counter terrorism actively and advocate countering terrorism through cooperation, and they propose to solve the conflict between countries through equal dialogue but not force.The research significance of this paper lies: 1. This paper broadens the research scope of the appraisal theory by applying the theory to the analysis to the reporting speeches in the news report.2. The current analysis of the reporting speeches could help us to broaden the horizon of interpreting the political news report, and treat the political news report more rationally.