Positive Discourse Analysis Of Commencement Addresses In American Universities From The Perspective Of Appraisal Theory

The appraisal theory is the new development of systemic functional linguistics, which is developed by the linguist Dr. Martin who established the theoretical framework of appraisal theory. Through analyzing the discourse, it deals with some social contradictions and unfair phenomenon with more positive attitude.It aims to establish a harmonious society through analyzing discourse. Commencement address has become a tradition in American universities, and it is a branch of campus culture. Commencement address is one type of public speaking. As for studies of public speaking discourse, most of them are analyzed from the perspective of critical discourse analysis, but there are a few studies from perspective of positive discourse analysis to study public speaking. What’s more, there are few studies on commencement address from the perspective of positive discourse analysis. This thesis analyzes the commencement addresses in American universities from the perspective of positive discourse analysis by using appraisal theory. The purpose of this thesis is to open a new vision for the development of positive discourse analysis.This thesis introduces two research questions:(1) Is the distribution of sub-systems attitude,engagement and graduation balanced in commencement addresses? What are the characteristics of distribution in three sub-systems of appraisal theory in the commencement addresses?(2) What are reflected through such characteristics of distribution?The appraisal theory has three sub-systems: attitude, engagement and graduation. In this thesis, UAM Corpus Tool is employed as the research instrument. It is used to conduct the statistic and annotation of the addresses to obtain the appraisal features.Through the positive discourse analysis of 10 commencement addresses from American universities,we can see that the distribution of three sub-systems is not balanced. The attitude resources take higher proportion than the engagement and graduation resources. It shows that the addressers want to communicate with listeners, and to solve the problem in a peaceful way. The system of judgment occupies the a highest frequency among the attitudinal resources. We can see that the listeners’ emotion can be affected by the addressers, and the serious situation of employment encourages students to face challenges with confidence after graduating. We can figure that the frequency of dialogic expansion is used more frequently than that of dialogic contraction through the analysis of engagement resources. It shows the addressers want their addresses to be more objective and credible. In the graduation system, we can see that force is used much more than focus. The addressers praise the greatness of American students andexpect the bright future, intensification the persuasive effects.This thesis is divided into six chapters. The first chapter introduces the background, purpose,significance and outlines of the thesis. The second chapter is literature review, which looks back the research of predecessors. In this chapter, the author introduces the previous studies of domestic and abroad on positive discourse analysis and the development of Appraisal theory of abroad and domestic. The third chapter describes the three sub-systems, attitude, engagement and graduation respectively, and then constructes the theoretical framework of PDA. The fourth chapter is the research design, which introduces the research questions, research methods, data collection and research procedure. The fifth chapter is the most important part of this thesis. It analyzes the implied attitude and position from affect, judgment and appreciation. And then this part mainly analyzes the resources from proclaim, disclaim, entertain and attribute in the commencement addresses from the perspective of engagement. Its purpose is to reach the common goal through the different attitudes of different addressers. The last system is the graduation system, which is the analysis resource to the degree of attitude and engagement. Including two sub-systems—force and focus, which are designed to highlight the potential purpose and intention of the addressers. The last chapter is the summary of the thesis. It concludes and explains analyzing results which made by the appraisal theory. And this chapter also points out the suggestions and limitations of the thesis.Generally speaking, this thesis tries to analyze the commencement addresses in American universities from the perspective of positive discourse analysis by using appraisal theory as the method. Although it is not complete and profound, it aims at opening a new perspective for commencement address analysis and plays a supplementary role in CDA.