An Analysis Of Andrew Yang’s Campaign Speech In The 2020 American Presidential Campaign From The Perspective Of The Appraisal Theory

Concerned with all kinds of negotiable attitudes in discourse,Appraisal Theory is regarded as new expansion and supplement to the interpersonal function of Systemic Functional Grammars.Ever since its establishment,the Appraisal Theory is applied in analyzing various genres of discourse.Those researches,including researches that study political discourse,are mainly focused on summarizing the distribution and contribution of appraisal resources and illustrating features of evaluative resources in a specific discourse or genre.Meanwhile,analysis of political discourse also attracts attention from International Politics.So far,some researches have explored the feasibility of combining International Politics theories with Discourse Analysis in analyzing political discourse and attempted to establish a feasible analysis framework.However,the number of this type of research is quite small,leaving room for supplementation.This thesis selects a campaign speech delivered by Andrew Yang,the second Chinese American presidential campaign candidate in America’s history,in Iowa and analyzes it from the perspective of Appraisal Theory to summarize the distribution and contribution of appraisal resources in his speech.Some ideas on the relation between identity construction and policy publicity are also innovatively borrowed from the Post-structuralism of International Politics to assist the analysis.This thesis is aimed to answer following questions.First,what features of distribution of appraisal resources are in Andrew Yang’s speech.Second,what contribution of the appraisal resources makes to construct identities and personae in the speech? How does Andrew Yang justify his policies through establishing the legitimacy between the identities and his policies?The main findings of this study are as follows.First,Attitude resources are the most frequently used sub-types,making the major contribution to the identities construction.The second frequently applied resource is Engagement,followed by Graduation resources.Second,through the application of appraisal resources,he constructed different identity for him,the American people,Trump’s government and the developing science technology.Using these constructed identities a basis,Yang was able to justify the legitimacy between his proposals and the constructed identities,and thus disseminates his policies and gain voter’s support.