| With the ecological problems becoming increasingly prominent,there is growing concern on ecology related topics.In the field of linguistics,the combination of ecology and linguistics makes linguists study ecological discourse from different perspectives.Alexander & Stibbe(2014)claimed that the primary focus of ecological discourse is on the discourse which has an impact on the way that human interact with each other,other species and the environment.Xin Zhiying and Huang Guowen(2013)discussed the possibility of constructing ecological discourse analysis from the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics,which provides a theoretical basis for the analysis of ecological discourse from the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics.Fishery ecological discourse refers to the discourse which is related to the activity of harvesting fish,and it belongs to the category of ecological discourse.Appraisal theory is the extension of Systemic Functional Linguistics.Taking appraisal theory as the theoretical framework of fishery ecological discourse aims to explore the distributions of appraisal resources in fishery ecological discourse.In this thesis,30 reports on fishery ecology are selected from the official websites of China Daily and Washington Post respectively.From the perspective of Appraisal Theory,UAM Corpus Tool 3.3 is employed to annotate the Attitude,Engagement,and Graduation resources.Qualitative study and quantitative study are used to analyze the annotated resources.The aim is to answer the following three research questions:1)How do the appraisal resources distribute in fishery ecological discourse in China Daily and Washington Post?2)What are the similarities and differences in the distribution of appraisal resources in fishery ecological discourse between China Daily and Washington Post?3)What are the factors that lead to the similarities and differences in the distribution of appraisal resources?It is found that the whole trend of distribution of appraisal resource is similar inthe fishery reports of China Daily and Washington Post.The proportion of Engagement resources is the largest,Attitude resources take up the second and the proportion of Graduation resources is the smallest.In Engagement system,the tendency of appraisal resources is also similar.The differences are that there are more positive attitude resources than negative resources in the fishery reports of China Daily,while more negative attitude resources than positive attitude resources in the fishery reports of Washington Post.In the system of Engagement,the proportion of Monogloss resources is higher than that of Heterogloss resources in the fishery reports of China Daily,however,the number of Heterogloss resources is higher than that of Monogloss resources in the fishery reports of Washington Post.Due to the difference of news values,the distributions of attitude polarity are different.Different news features lead to the differences in the distributions of Monogloss resources and Heterogloss resources in the fishery reports of China Daily and Washington Post.Through a comparative study of the distributions of appraisal resources in fishery ecological discourse in China Daily and Washington Post,this study can enhance readers’ understanding of fishery ecological discourse and raise their fishery ecological awareness.At the same time,this study can make readers better understand the distribution features of appraisal resources in fishery ecological discourse,thus this study can provide a reference for reporters to make a better use of appraisal resources to express attitude and provide a reference for readers to have a comprehensive understanding of reporters’ attitude in cross cultural context. |
