The Study On The International News Reports Of Chinese COVID-19 Pandemic From The Perspective Of Appraisal Theory

In December 2019,the novel coronavirus pneumonia(COVID-19)outbroke in Wuhan,China.Subsequently,the COVID-19 epidemic broke out all over the world.Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic,China has adopted effective measures timely to prevent and control the epidemic,such as transparent information,Wuhan lockdown,establishing makeshift hospitals and so on.China’s fighting against the COVID-19 pandemic has achieved remarkable results.In addition,China actively provides assistance to other countries,such as donating medical supplies and dispatching medical teams.Since the outbreak of the epidemic,the world is keeping a close eye on China.However,the mainstream media around the world have made different reports on China’s combating of the COVID-19 epidemic.The international community have different attitudes and reactions towards the Chinese COVID-19 pandemic.Therefore,a study on the international news reports of Chinese COVID-19 pandemic is of great importance.Appraisal Theory is considered to be an effective theory in discourse analysis.Appraisal Theory is a further development of the interpersonal metafunction of Halliday’s functional grammar.Appraisal Theory consists of three subsystems,namely Attitude,Engagement and Graduation,which focuses on the feelings,the source of attitude and the gradability of evaluation respectively.So far,many scholars have used Appraisal Theory to conduct detailed analysis of news discourse theoretically and practically,which proves the feasibility of news discourse analysis based on Appraisal Theory.The thesis selects several events in China’s fighting against COVID-19 epidemic as keywords,such as Wuhan lockdown,makeshift hospital,vaccine aid,etc.to collects news reports from the official websites of international mainstream news media and organizations.Furthermore,the author classifies the news reports and establishes a Corpus.By adopting a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods,the study uses Appraisal Theory to analyze the news reports to find out the realization and distribution of appraisal resources.Meanwhile,the thesis explores the similarities and differences of the distribution.Finally,the thesis aims to find out the different evaluations and stances of the international community towards Chinese COVID-19 pandemic.The thesis aims to solve the following three questions.1.What are the distribution and frequencies of the appraisal resources in the international news reports about Chinese COVID-19 pandemic?2.What are the similarities and differences of the distribution and frequencies of the appraisal resources in the international news reports about Chinese COVID-19 pandemic?3.What are the evaluations and stances of the countries hidden behind the appraisal resources towards Chinese efforts in combating the COVID-19 pandemic?Within the framework of Appraisal Theory,the thesis makes an analysis of international news reports on China’s COVID-19 epidemic,it finds that:Firstly,most of the agencies have used a lot of appraisal resources in news reports.According to the negative and positive polarity of attitudinal resources,the news reports are divided into three categories,positive news discourse,negative news discourse and neutral news discourse.In the positive and negative news discourse,there are the largest number of attitudinal resources,engagement ranks the second place,and graduation is the least.While in neutral news reports,engagement resources rank the first place,followed by attitude and graduation.Secondly,there are some similarities among the three kinds of news reports.From the perspective of the attitude system,judgement accounts for an overwhelming majority.From the point of view of the engagement system,dialogic expansion outnumbers dialogic contraction.From the perspective of graduation,the number of force resources is larger than that of focus resources.Moreover,there are some differences.In terms of attitude,appreciation is larger than affect in positive and negative news reports while it is quite opposite in negative news reports.Speaking of engagement,the source of quotation is quite different.Positive and neutral news discourse prefers to cite information from office websites and experts of China or international organizations.While negative news discourse tends to quote discourse from their own experts.With regard to graduation,positive and neutral news reports tend to use more intensification and sharpen resources.In contrast,negative news reports adopt more quantification and soften resources.Thirdly,when it comes to the different evaluations and stances of the international media towards China’s fighting against COVID-19 pandemic,the positive category of international news agencies believes that China has done an excellent job and achieved great positive results in combating the COVID-19 pandemic.China is always ready to cooperate with other countries in fighting against the COVID-19 pandemic.The negative one considers China fails to control the pandemic which leads to the mass spread of the epidemic all over the world.The neutral media tries to write reports impartially and lets the readers to make judgements and evaluations.In summary,the study not only expands the scope of study on news discourse based on Appraisal Theory,but also explores the various evaluations and stances of different countries on China’s fighting against the COVID-19 epidemic.Meanwhile this research is beneficial to enhance readers’ awareness of critical reading and improve readers’ judgment ability.In a word,the study is of great significance.