An Analysis Of Civil News Reports From The Perspective Of Appraisal Theory

Systemic Functional Grammar (Halliday,1994) provides a practical andmulti-functional theoretical framework for modern discourse analysis. Halliday (2000)proposed three meta-functions: Ideational function, Interpersonal function andTextual function. The interpersonal function plays a very important role in thediscourse analysis. It means that how the speakers use language to identify the socialroles and status, how to express their attitude, emotion and his judgment on the thingsin the world, how to participate in the social activities, and how to influence theirbehavior and change their original views on the things or events.Appraisal Theory (Martin&White,2005) is a newly developedlexico-grammatical framework for learning interpersonal meaning. It is an expansionof the interpersonal meaning in the Systemic Functional Grammar (Li Zhanzi,2003).Based on the Systemic Functional Grammar, the theory is concerned with language ofevaluation, attitude and emotion. Appraisal Theory can be divided into threedimensions, that is, Attitude, Engagement and Graduation. The study shows that theAppraisal Theory is of great practical value, which can explore the Appraisalresources in the language and make better understanding of the users’ attitude, viewsand standpoint systematically and finally achieve the effect of persuasion.The thesis analyzes the corpus chosen from People’s Daily from a newperspective of discourse analysis under the Framework of Appraisal Theory. Thethesis aims to explore the distribution of Appraisal resources in civil news and itsapplication of different evaluative devices so as to interpret how the author builds therelationships with readers to facilitate understandings. It also analyzes the role of theAppraisal resources in Civil news, that is, how the Appraisal resources provide aplatform to speak for the common people, and how the Appraisal resources harmonizethe conflict and interests among different social strata so as to attain the wishes ofuniting different social classes and the goal of constructing a harmonious and civilizedsociety. The thesis applies both qualitative and quantitative analytical approaches to makethe conclusion. The main results show that:1) in the Appraisal system, thedistribution of Attitude, Engagement and Graduation in the civil news is uneven, sodoes the each subsystem of Appraisal resources. There is a large number of attitudinalresources are used in the civil news, and another two resources, namely, Engagementand Graduation, are just applied to elicit attitudinal resources.2) In Attitude, theproportion of Affect resources in the civil news is less. The Attitudinal resources incivil news express their feelings mainly through the Judgment and Appreciation. Asto Engagement, the Engagement resources in the civil news are mainly expressed bythe sub-systems of Entertain and Disclaim. In terms of Graduation, the use ofgradable force is obvious more than ungraded focus.3) The Appraisal Resources inthe civil news reports plays an important role on two functions, namely releasinginformation and persuasion.The author explores the distribution rules and characteristics of Appraisalresources from the perspective of Appraisal Theory. In the process of producingAppraisal meaning, the conclusion shows that the aim of the civil news is to solvesocial contradictions with a positive attitude, which provides a discourse platform forthe common people, coordinates the interests and contradictions from all walks of life,and plays its role in the construction of a harmonious society. Pedagogically, byanalyzing the discourse of civil news under the framework of Appraisal Theory, ithelps students better understand the characteristics of the civil news, master the usageof assessment strategies properly, so that students can use the correct language forms,learn more English reading and writing skills, so as to improve their English ability.