| Critical discourse analysis(CDA)has been the focus in the field of discourse analysis for decades.Studies on CDA tend to reveal the asymmetric power relationship behind discourse.As the complement of CDA,positive discourse analysis(PDA)adopts a positive attitude and more constructive way in discourse analysis,aiming to build a harmonious society.In the study of PDA,Appraisal Theory is an important analytical tool,which is developed from the interpersonal function of Halliday’s Systematic Functional Grammar.Appraisal Theory is about a set of systems of appraisal resources.It complements Systematic Functional Grammar in the semantics of evaluation,for it is useful to explore the attitudes and stances in the discourse by analyzing appraisal resources.Since the Belt and Road initiative was proposed,it has received great attention,and there are a large number of news reports on it.Thus this study selects 30 news reports on the Belt and Road as the data,attempting to make a positive discourse analysis of them based on Appraisal Theory.Through detailed analyses,it can be found that there are abundant appraisal resources in the selected news reports,including attitude resources,engagement resources and graduation resources according to the three subsystems of Appraisal Theory,and most of them are positive.Meanwhile,attitude resources occupy the largest proportion,followed by engagement resources,and graduation resources take up the least proportion.By emotional reaction and the evaluation of people and things,attitude resources have successfully expressed the confidence of people worldwide in the Belt and Road,and strengthened the significance of it.By employing dialogic expansion and contraction resources,engagement resources have offered broad space for people to negotiate and made the news more persuasive.By up-scaling and down-scaling in the attitude system and engagement system,graduation resources have strengthened the expression of emotions and achieved the emotional agreement with the readers.In short,the positive discourse analysis of the news reports on the Belt and Roadbased on Appraisal Theory has complemented the study of the Belt and Road in a linguistic way.Most importantly,by exploring the appraisal resources in the news reports,it makes people better realize the significance of this initiative and helps to shape a positive national image of China. |
