A Positive Discourse Analysis Of White Papers On China-US Economic And Trade Friction And Consultations Based On Appraisal Theory

Four decades have witnessed sound and stable economic and trade ties between China and America since the establishment of diplomatic relation of the two sides.However,advocating “America First”,the new US administration took office in 2017 and constantly provoked trade disputes with China as well as imposed its own interests on China.To clarify facts and demonstrate China’s position on the economic and trade friction and consultation with the US,the Chinese government,therefore,issued two White Papers titled The Facts and China’s Position on China-US Trade Friction and China’s Position on the China-US Economic and Trade Consultations in September 2018 and June 2019 respectively.At present,the research on China-US trade friction mainly comes from economy and journalism fields while it is hardly conducted in linguistic field.These two government documents have abundant appraisal resources and show China’s positive attitude towards settling the disputes with the US,to a large degree,conveying interpersonal meaning.Therefore,based on Appraisal Theory,this thesis selects these two White Papers as research data in an attempt to examine the distribution of appraisal resources and investigate the implicit interpersonal function conveyed by the two White Papers from the perspective of Positive Discourse Analysis.In other words,this thesis probes into how China narrows the gap between China and the US and even the rest of the world in a bid to construct dialogical solidarity to demonstrate China’s positive attitude in pursuing reasonable solutions.This thesis combines quantitative and qualitative research methods together.With the help of UAM Corpus Tool 3.3u2,the present study figures out the distribution of appraisal resources in the White Papers.Attitude resources rank the first in the total appraisal resources,followed by graduation resources and engagement resources have the lowest proportion.By using attitude resources,China clarifies its position on the economic relations with the US.Engagement resources make a space for negotiation between China and the US.Graduation resources mainlyhighlight the authenticity of the documents.In short,the positive discourse analysis of the two White Papers based on Appraisal Theory not only explores the positive attitude of China,but also digs out the interpersonal meaning of the two White Papers.