| Science and technology news discourse from the Internet is the most effective resources for people to obtain the latest technological information.Research finds that science and technology news discourse is not objective and neutral,but hides the news writer?s attitude,stance and interpersonal meaning.The current research on science and technology discourse is mainly based on grammatical metaphor,theme-rheme model,lexical grammar of systemic functional linguistics,the conceptual metaphor and conceptual blending of cognitive linguistics,and the combination of functional linguistics and cognitive linguistics.Some scholars have studied the attitude system in the appraisal theory,however,there are fewer researches on the engagement resources in science and technology news discourse and contrastive analyses of the engagement resources in English and Chinese science and technology news discourse.This paper takes the engagement system of the appraisal theory as the theoretical framework,aims to explore the similarities and differences of the engagement resources in English and Chinese science and technology news discourse.The appraisal theory was proposed by J.R.Martin(1982),it is developed from interpersonal function in systemic functional linguistics and it is a new lexical grammatical framework.It evaluates the position,viewpoint and attitude of language users towards the context by analyzing language.The engagement system of the appraisal theory refers to how the speaker/writer uses some resources to express his views to influence the position and attitude of the reader/hearer,it focuses on the sources of different voices and how these different voices negotiate with each other.This paper takes it as the framework and 30 science and technology news discourse randomly selected from the BBC News website and China Daily website as corpus,explores the similarities and differences of the engagement resources in English and Chinese science and technology news discourse by using linguistic statistics software UAM Corpus Tool.It mainly discusses the following three problems:1.What engagement resources are used in English and Chinese science and technology news discourse?2.What are the similarities and differences of the distribution patterns of the engagement resources used in English and Chinese science and technology news discourse?3.What are the reasons for the similarities and differences of the distribution patterns of the engagement resources used in English and Chinese science and technology news discourse?The research finds that 1.Both English and Chinese science and technology news discourse contain rich engagement resources,which shows that science and technology news discourse contain interpersonal meaning.The engagement resources of science and technology news discourse show that the expression of interpersonal meaning is through the news writer?s establishing authority and negotiating with potential readers.2.The similarities are as follows:(1)Dialogic expansion resources are higher than dialogic contraction resources,indicating that writers of science and technology news discourse are more inclined to use dialogic expansion resources to express their attitudes and stances,making it easier for potential readers to accept the news writer?s views.(2)In the dialogic contraction resources,disclaim resources are used more than proclaim resources.(3)Within disclaim resources,the use of counter resources is higher than that of deny resources.(4)Among proclaim resources,endorse resources are the most used,followed by pronounce resources,and concur resources accounts for the least.(5)Among the entertain resources,modality is the most used.(6)In attribute resources,acknowledge resources are used more than distance resources.The differences are as follows:(1)There are more dialogic expansion resources in Chinese science and technology news discourse than in English science and technology news discourse.(2)Chinese science and technology news discourse is more inclined to use counter resources and entertain resources,and English science and technology news discourse is more inclined to use deny resources and attribute resources.3.The differences in Western and Chinese cultures have resulted in these differences in English and Chinese science and technology news discourse.This paper makes a contrastive analysis of English and Chinese science and technology news discourse from the perspective of engagement,which expands the research scope of appraisal theory,and provides a reference for future research on science and technology news discourse.At the same time,it also helps readers better understand the news writer?s attitude,stance and the interpersonal meaning involved in the science and technology news discourse,and better understand the differences between English and Chinese and the cultural differences behind the two different languages. |
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