A Study Of Appraisal Resources In Government Work Report From The Perspective Of Positive Discourse Analysis

Interpersonal relationship and language have the interwoven connection. On the one hand, interpersonal relationship influences the choice of words and utterances during communication; on the other hand, the selection of utterance reflects a certain relationship; what‘s more, language is an important way to construct and maintain social interpersonal relationship. In order to construct friendly unified relations with national public and international community, and achieve some political purposes, China is supposed to issue Government Work Report(hereafter GWR) each year. The national GWR is drafted and composed by the State Council, which is delivered by Premier of the State Council to National People‘s Congress each year. GWR as the formal official document is a guiding document for China‘s development. Achievements gotten over the past year, national new policies and working plans for government‘s future development, etc. have been fully embodied in each GWR. Each GWR is an important channel to report works of government to national public, an effective window for international communities to know more about China‘s present situations, an important way for government to show its stance and negotiate or construct unified relations with public.On the basis of interpersonal function of Halliday‘s Systematic Functional Linguistics, positive discourse analysis(hereafter PDA) guides readers to adopt positive and friend attitudes in analyzing discourses. PDA plays a positive constructive role to the whole society. Its ultimate goal is to build a tolerant and harmonious human society. Professor Martin put forward Appraisal Theory in 1990 s. The Appraisal Theory explores language‘s evaluative functions, which focuses on speakers‘/writers‘ evaluations or stances on other people or things and how to express their own attitudes to addressees or how to negotiate relations with their listeners/readers. This theory provides a new perspective for language‘s interpersonal function and expands studies on interpersonal meanings. The Appraisal Theory has been the theoretical basis and the main analyzing tool of PDA. This thesis analyzes appraisal resources in Government Work Report with the tool of Appraisal Theory on the perspective of PDA. This analysis can make national and international readers better understand China‘s policies and developmental plans, better show government‘s image of serving the people, greatly improve government‘s authority and credibility, shorten the distance between government and the public, which is conductive for government to construct unified relations with national public, align more international powers to work together as one in promoting economic and social development. This corresponds to Chinese era theme of building up harmonious society and realizing the Chinese dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.At present, studies on GWR mainly focus on economic or politic perspective. In the field of linguistic, seldom researchers explore annual GWR. Although some scholars pay attention to GWR, their studies mainly focus on the angle of translation. Studies on GWR from the perspective of PDA are urgent to be expanded. This thesis chooses the English version of GWR(2015) as the analyzing material, which is selected from the authoritative and well-known website of the Central Government of the People‘s Republic of China: http://www.gov.cn/. On the basis of the Appraisal Theory, this thesis explores appraisal resources in GWR(2015) from the angle of PDA. The purpose of this thesis is to find out how government applies appraisal resources to make solidarity with the public and align with international putative readers. The specific research questions include(1) how do various appraisal resources distribute in GWR(2015) and why?(2) how does government use appraisal resources to convey its attitudes, shorten the distance with national public or international putative readers and make solidarity with them? This research combines quantitative method and qualitative method. Firstly, all the appraisal resources are marked and categorized into different systems. Regularities of distribution and main reasons are summarized through data statistics. After the overall analysis, this study selects 124 typical examples from GWR(2015). The concrete functions of different evaluative resources and how dos government use these resources to make unified relations with its addressees are achieved by analyzing these examples.Appraisal resources include attitudinal resources, engagement resources and graduating resources. The results show that(1) GWR(2015) uses abundant appraisal resources. The use of these resources is not equal. Attitudinal resources enjoy the first place. Engagement is the last.(2) Among the subsystems of attitude, affect resources enjoy the last place.(3) Among the subsystems of engagement, dialogic contraction is far more than dialogic expansion.(4) Among the subsystems of graduation, force resources outnumber focus resources. These results are determined by evaluative functions of different appraisal resources, their actual effects and features of GWR. The concrete application and effects of each appraisal resource are analyzed in detail in the body part of this thesis. From the perspective of PDA, all appraisal resources contribute to establish friendly unified relationships between government and its addressees, promote the construction of harmonious society and accelerate the realization of Chinese Dream.In a word, this thesis testifies the feasibility of discussing GWR from the perspective of PDA, expands the application of appraisal analysis and at the same time enriches the studies on GWR.