| In recent years, the study of discourse analysis has been a hot topic. Political report discourse analysis as a type of discourse analysis, it is an important form of human communication and a special kind of language use, which is of great research value. Political report expresses interpersonal meaning and shows purpose and intention. Therefore, many researches have focused on it. However, these researches only put more emphasis on certain aspects of it and lack of a comprehensive study. Mr. Li Keqiang as a Premier, his political reports carry a wealth of interpersonal meaning. Yet, there are few studies on them. This study makes a positive discourse analysis of Premier Li Keqiang‘s political reports, which is of great significance.Owing to the disadvantages of critical discourse analysis, J. R. Martin proposed positive discourse analysis, which believes that language analysis should observe good news that advocates peace and equality in positive attitude and view, making critical thinking develop towards positive direction and guiding the readers with positive thinking. The theoretical framework of positive discourse analysis is appraisal theory, AT, also called Appraisal system, which can be divided into three sub-systems: Attitude system, Engagement system and Graduation system and serves as a framework for detailed analyses of this study.The significance of this study includes two aspects. Theoretically, this study not only enriches the positive discourse analysis, but also makes a useful complement to the critical discourse analysis. Practically, the present study provides practical references for future speakers. 24 pieces of political reports are chosen from the official website of Central People‘s Government of the People‘s Republic of China to build a small corpus, which contains 65,005 words. This thesis includes three research questions: 1) What are the frequencies and distributions of different appraisal resources in Premier Li Keqiang‘s po litical reports? What are the differences of the frequencies and distributions of different appraisal resources? 2) How do Premier Li Keqiang‘s political reports express the interpersonal meaning by using appraisal resources? How does he show his stances a nd positions in his political reports? 3) What are the linguistic features of Premier Li Keqiang‘s political reports discourses?In order to carry out this study, bo th qualitative method and statistical description are adopted in this thesis. The followings are major findings: Firstly, a variety of appraisal resources are adopted in Premier Li Keqiang‘s political reports. And the frequencies and distributions of different Appraisal resources in Premier Li Keqiang‘s political reports are quite different. The findings show that: firstly, Attitude resources are more frequently adoptd than Engagement resources and Graduation resources. Moreover, positive resources are more than negative resources. Secondly, Premier Li Keqiang‘s political reports express interpersonal meaning. In speaking, Premier Li builds his own identity as a speaker to convey interpersonal meaning and expresses his political positions and views, resulting in the audience‘s resonance. Thirdly, some linguistic features of Premier Li‘s political reports are shown: 1) political reports discourses are a kind of formal discourse in terms of choosing words, more written words are used, which is quite formal and persuasive. 2) political reports discourses adopt various kinds of sentence types and both short sentences and long sentences are used to express the interpersonal meaning. 3) in political reports discourses, many old sayings are employed which make the political reports more moving. 4) political reports discourses are often a major political issue which is related to the country, political parties, national reform, peace and progress and have political overtones. |
