Positive Discourse Analysis Of English Sports News Based On Appraisal Theory

As a new perspective of discourse analysis,the positive discourse analysis(PDA)is being used by more and more scholars.However,PDA mainly focuses on such areas as: politics,economy,people’s livelihood and so on.So far few scholars have employed PDA to analyze sports news.“Higher,faster and stronger” is the spirit of Olympic Games which was highlighted by sports news.Thus,this thesis analyzed the 2016 Rio Olympic Games from the perspective of positive discourse analysis.In this paper,the author first selected 10 reports on Rio Olympic Games from China Daily and Washington Post respectively.Employing Appraisal Theory,the author analyzed the 20 selected reports.It was found that both China Daily and Washington Post employed a lot of appraisal resources when reporting Rio Olympic Games.Among the three subcategories of Appraisal Theory: attitude,engagement and graduation,engagement occupied the largest proportion in both of these two newspapers.Compared with China Daily,Washington Post used more appraisal resources.In attitude system,China Daily used more affective items,while Washington Post used more judgment and appreciation items.In terms of engagement system,China Daily employed more expansion resources.And for graduation system,China Daily used more “raise” and “sharpen” items than Washington Post.