The Comparative Study On The Engagement Resources In Chinese And American English Editorials From The Perspective Of Appraisal Theory

As a kind of news comments,editorial is considered as the heart and soul of newspaper.Through commenting on the af fairs happened at home a nd abroad,editorial expresses th e newspaper’s opinions and stances in order to guide the public’ s viewpoints.As a sub-genre of news discourses,editorial has drew a lot of scholars’ attention.They have studied the discourse structure,stylistic f eature and rheto rical device of editorial f rom the cognitive and f unctional perspectives.Appraisal Theory is a n ew lexico-grammatical system,proposed by Martin and W hite in the 19 th century on the basis of System ic Functional Grammar.It concludes three subsystems: attitude,engagement and graduation.The resear ches on Ap praisal Theory are m ainly focused on the attitude subsystem,and the researches in the engagement and graduation subsystems are limited.Thus,this thesis attem pts to m ake a comparative study of the Chinese and Am erican English editorials under the framework of engagement subsystem of Appraisal Theory.There are three research questions in this thesis:(1)What kinds of engagement resources are used respectively in Chinese and American English editorials and how are they distributed with the purpose to affect the actual and potential readers’ attitude;(2)What are the similarities and dif ferences of the engagem ent resources distribution between C hinese and Am erican English editorials in regards to kinds,frequency and realization;(3)What are the reasons of the similarities and dif ferences in Chinese and Am erican English editorials ? The data to be analyzed are 60 pieces of editorials concerned about international af fairs collected from the official networks of China Daily and W ashing Post carefully.With the help of the professional linguistic software(UAM Corpus Tool),the thesis has the fo llowing m ajor findings after a descriptive analyze.First,Chin ese and Am erican English edit orials em ploy all kinds of heteroglossic engagement resources.Second,Chinese and A merican English editorials tend to have a sam e selection in the subsystem s of engagem ent resources.S pecifically,in the subsystem of expansion,they tend to use m ore entertainment resources to express their opinions.Within the subsystem of attribution,acknowledgem ent is their favorites.In the subs ystem of contraction,both of them e mploy more disclaim resources than proclaim resources.They sim ilarly prefer countering resources to denial resources in the subsystem of disclaim.What’s m ore,under proclaim,they again adopted m ore pronouncemen t resources.In the author ’s opinion,these similarities are mainly caused by the shared purpose of editorial and the nature of engagem ent system itself.Third,there are two m ain differences between Chinese and Am erican English editorials.Chinese English edito rials prefer c ontraction resources to expansion resources.On the contrary,American English editorials tend to employ more expansion resources.As for the selection of the subsystem s of the contrac tion and expansion,disclaim resources are the Chinese English editorials favorite,while American English editorials show their preference to entertainment.Such dif ferences are caused by the different media mechanisms in China and America as well as the different cultural values between China and America.The thesis has m ade a comparative study in Chinese and American English editorials on the engagem ent resources from the aspect of Appraisal Theory with the hope to m ake a contribution to the application of Appraisal Theo ry as well as to prov ide a new angle for th e editorial research.What’s more,the present study is also hoped to provide guidance for English teaching,especially the newspaper reading.