A Study Of Times People’s News From The Perspective Of Appraisal Theory

The data in this thesis is choosing from Times People, which is a social networkoffering all kinds of news and personal opinions. Some researches have been carriedout on the news about China in the American newspapers in terms of functionalgrammar, but just a few discourse researches be done about it let alone the researchabout Times People’s news of Xinjiang. The present research intends to explore theAttitude resources features in news items from the perspective of Appraisal Theory.The data for the present study are35news items selected from websiteHTTP://WWW.BBC.CO.UK/NEWS/, ranging from the year Oct.2008to the year Aug.2012. This study have been used both qualitative and quantitative methodology.The research questions of the study is to investigate（1）What is the distributionof Attitude resources in the news items?（2）How are Engagement resources and theGraduation resources distributed in the news items?（3）How do the Engagementresources and the Graduation resources modulate the expression of Attitude in newsreport?（4）Why does the news of Xinjiang include these Attitude features? Fourresearch questions are to be answered respectively by data description and exampleanalysis. The results show that the Graduation resources account for a relatively smallProportion of the overall Appraisal recourses. Meanwhile compared with Graduation,Attitude and Engagement resources contribute a dominant proportion. In the Attitudesystem, the affect resources are less frequently employed by the reporters to expresstheir attitudes. The study of the modulations resources of Attitude shows that theengagement resources play an important role in modulating the dialogic space ofdifferent reporters’ own viewpoints and set up their authorities’ voices, in reducing thechallenges of the opposite opinion, and also in strengthening the persuasion of theirnews. The Graduation resources can modulate the forces of attitude to help thereporters to express their attitudes in a more accurate way, and strengthen or weakenthe alignment with the readers or medium who hold different points. A large number of negative Attitude resources is adopted in Times People’s news of Xinjiang, whichindicates that there are hidden ideologies which manipulate the news reporting ofTimes People on Xinjiang. So the readers should be sensitized to the embeddedideologies, and improve their ability to distinguish linguistic attitudes in newsreporting.The thesis provides insights into the study Times People’s news of Xinjiang. Itis of great importance to attempt to make a tentative research of the media news ofTimes People from the perspective of Appraisal Theory. Studying Attitude resourcesin Xinjiang news plays an important role in further understanding how the Appraisalresources are used in the Times People’s news of Xinjing. It sheds some light on thethe reader’s who should make themselves more sensitive to embedded ideologies, andimprove their ability of linguistic analysis and judgment. It is still hoped that it cancontribute to the current research of the Times People’s news of Xinjiang from theperspective of the Appraisal to some degree.