A Study Of Cultural Differences Of Appraisal Resources In Chinese And American Corporate Crisis Public Relation Statements From Perspective Of Appraisal Theory

Corporate crisis public relation statement is a kind of text that an enterprise applies words to negotiate and communicate with the public in order to mitigate the damage caused by the crisis,so as to obtain understanding and acceptance of the public.With crisis public relation statements,enterprises can reduce risks and losses created by the crises by choosing appropriate language resources.Languages are the carrier of cultures,so cultures are essential factors that multinational companies should consider when forming crisis public relation statements.Therefore,it is of vital significance to explore how cultural factors affect the choice and application of language resources.Martin?s appraisal theory focuses on various attitudes that can be consulted in a text,which chiefly examines how speakers or writers make evaluations in languages.Appraisal system is divided into attitude system,engagement system and graduation system.Among them,attitude system contains affect,judgment and appreciation;engagement system is divided into dialogic contraction and dialogic expansion;graduation system includes force and focus.Appraisal theory plays a significant guiding role in the study of cultural factors hidden in language communication.In light of this,the thesis takes appraisal theory as theoretical framework to conduct a cultural contrastive study on appraisal resources of Chinese and American corporate crisis public relation statements,among which all corpora are selected from corporate official websites.In virtue of a corpus statistical tool,namely UAM Corpus Tool 3.3,the thesis firstly finds out the similarities and differences in the application of appraisal resources by calculating usage frequencies of them in Chinese and American corporate statements in crisis public relation,then further analyzes how enterprises apply appraisal resources to negotiate and communicate with the public giving specific examples,finally explains cultural reasons for the differences.The research shows that there are similarities and differences between Chinese and American corporate crisis public relation statements.In terms of attitude system,Chinese and American enterprises tend to apply judgment resources to convey attitudes;the usage frequency of Chinese enterprises is higher than that of American enterprises.On the contrary,American enterprises adopt more affect resources and appreciation resources than Chinese enterprises.In terms of engagement system,Chinese and American enterprises mostly apply dialogic contraction resources to firmly express their own attitudes and opinions to make clarifications.However,American enterprises apply more dialogic contraction resources than Chinese enterprises,and Chinese enterprises apply more dialogic expansion resources than American enterprises.In terms of graduation system,Chinese and American enterprises greatly employ force resources to strengthen the degree of their opinions and attitudes,while the employment of focus resources is very few.There are few differences between the two in this system.These differences are mainly related to diverse cultural traditions,context cultures,cultural value orientations and thinking patterns between China and the United States.Through a cultural contrastive analysis of Chinese and American corporate crisis public relation statements,the thesis intends to provide a reference for Chinese and American enterprises,especially multinational enterprises,to form better crisis public relation statements,so as to help them better survive and develop in the environment of global economic integration.And it also hopes to provide a different perspective for the study of intercultural communication.