A Positive Discourse Analysis Of TED Speeches On The Topic Of “China” From The Perspective Of Appraisal Theory

TED,as the most popular speech platform,has a strong power of communication and influence.Nowadays,China has become the world’s second largest economy from the “nobody” on the world stage,and China’s development has become a hot topic in the world media.This thesis selects 15 speeches from the speeches on the topic of “China” on TED official website as the corpus,and intends to analyze the corpus from the perspective of Positive Discourse Analysis within the framework of Appraisal Theory.This thesis attempts to answer the following three questions: 1.What are the distribution characteristics of the appraisal resources in the selected speeches? 2.What are the roles of Attitude resources,Engagement resources and Graduation resources in the selected speeches? 3.What positive opinions and attitudes towards China have the speakers expressed through those appraisal resources?Through qualitative and quantitative analysis,the research results for the selected corpus are summarized as follows:(1)The distribution of Attitude,Engagement and Graduation resources is unbalanced,among which Graduation resources are the most,Attitude resources are the second,and Engagement resources are the least.In the attitude system,there are more Appreciation resources than Judgement resources and more Judgement resources than Affect resources.Besides,there are more positive resources than negative resources in each subsystem.(2)Attitude resources are the direct carriers of attitudes,and speakers use different attitude resources to present opinions and attitudes.The Engagement system is an important part of public speaking.Hetero-gloss resources are often used to expand the source of utterance validity,thereby enhancing the credibility of opinions.A large number of Graduation resources are distributed in the discourse,making the Attitude system and Engagement system concrete and solid,and making the speaker’s expression more accurate and clearer.(3)Through observation,the speakers’ attitude towards China’s development is positive and optimistic.The trajectory of China’s development is seen as unprecedented.The capability and results of China’s development are highly evaluated,and the uniqueness and advanced nature of China’s development are supported by numerous powerful examples.In summary,using the Appraisal Theory to conduct positive discourse analysis on the selected speeches,we can not only analyze the positive meanings inside the discourse from the linguistic level,but also draw the views and attitudes on today’s rapidly developing China expressed in the TED speech.