Appraisal Analysis Of The Diplomatic Responses To The South China Sea Arbitration Ruling By The Governments Of China,Philippine,the United States And Russia

The arbitration case on dispute over the ?maritime jurisdiction? in the South China Sea between China and the Philippines is an international hot issue.The ruling of the arbitration initiated by the Philippines was released on 12 July,2016,towards which many countries made immediate responses.The current study selects diplomatic statements by China,the Philippines,the United States and Russia and does discourse analysis from the perspective of Appraisal theory.The thesis analyzes the positions expressed in the four statements,the alignment they formed with their putative addressees,and the force of their positions through the investigation of deployment of attitude,graduation and engagement resources.The study finds that the four statements voice their positions mainly through appreciation and judgment resources,specifically,the propriety of judgment.China expresses its objection and criticism to the initiation of the arbitration by the Philippines,the misconduct of the Arbitral Tribunal and its decision because of the invalidity;the Philippines and the USA affirm the Tribunal and its decision as legally binding on both China and the Philippines;Russia makes no comment on these things so as to confirm its position as non-involvement.Monoglossia is adopted either to offer supporting proofs for the argumentation promoted and to transfer addressees who has been opponents into supporter to the argumentation,or to influence addressees ideologically by taken-for-grantedness.Dialogically contractive engagement,such as denial,pronounce and endorse are favored to emphasize their insistence on such positions,to align with their putative addressees and to further contract the dialogic space for who holds a contrary position.Intensified force is adopted to indicate the increasing investment for these positions.For this purpose,modes such as repetition,isolated modifiers,metaphor,and nominalization are employed.