Dialogical Expansion And Contraction In News Reports

News reports involve the writer’s subjective appreciation and standpoints towards a certain event or proposition.That is,they represent multiple interpersonal meanings and functions.Studies on news discourse mainly undergo from language and power from Critical Discourse Analysis(Chen,1995;Halliday,2003;Xin,2005)to the interpretation of ideational meaning from the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics(Fowler,1991;Halliday,1994).However,studies on the deeper interpersonal meaning of news discourse is scarce.Inter-subjectivity,in essence,refers to the dialogical relationship between different interactants,reflecting the attention the speaker pays to the interaction when he/she claims his/her points of view(Cheng,2009).As a linguistic means to analyze the interpersonal meanings,it expounds the interpersonal meanings more elaborately via exploring the dialogue and negotiation between the speaker and the audience.Studies on news reports from this approach mainly focus on the qualitative analysis on the lexical structure(Liu et al.,2016).Appraisal system(Martin,2003)focuses on the multiple meanings embedded in the text.Hu(2005)also pinpoints that Appraisal system is a linguistic strategy while the speaker expresses his views or negotiates with the audience.This function provides an effective theoretical foundation for exploration of interpersonal meanings and enriches the study on the social and cultural effects.In 2005,Martin & White classified the Appraisal system into three sub-categories,among which the engagement resources affirm the differing ways of realization of negotiation between the speaker and the audience and lay a solid theoretical and practical foundation for research on inter-subjectivity.Through quantitative and qualitative analysis approach,this thesis investigated the subjectivity between the writer and readers and explored the approach and techniques when the writer expanding and contracting dialogical spaces through counting,describing and analyzing engagement resources in the eight news reports on haze from China Daily and The Guardian.And then it discussed the differences in ideology from insight of social and cultural factors.This study has found three conclusions as the following:Firstly,heteroglossic resources are prevalent in both media.Similarities and differences exit at the same time in the distribution of dialogical expansive resources and dialogical contractive resources.Similarities of the distribution pattern of engagement resources are illustrated:(i)Dialogic expansion is more than dialogic contraction in Chinese and British media,with the occurrence of 41% in China Daily and 33% in The Guardian.(ii)Within dialogic expansion,entertain resources are employed more frequently,with the proportion of 22% in China Daily and 11% in The Guardian.In terms of attribute resources,both media tend to apply more acknowledge resources,with the percentage of 19% in China Daily and 21% in The Guardian.(iii)Within dialogic contraction,values of disclaim resources take the most part,occupying 12% in China Daily and 8% in The Guardian.Differences on the distribution of engagement are also found in this thesis.(i)The dialogic expansion resources employed in China Daily take higher percentage than those in The Guardian,with 41% versus 33%.(ii)Concerning with dialogic expansion,Chinese reporters are more willing to apply much more entertain resources than those in British media.(iii)Within dialogic contraction,counter resources in The Guardian take up more proportion than China Daily,with 9% versus 6%.Secondly,both China Daily and The Guardian incline to leave more dialogical space for themselves through enlarging the dialogical space,while,the interaction between the reporters and readers differs.China Daily applies specific reporting diction to declare its responsibility and attention to the issue through allowing different opinions,which shows its respect for the readers and an active interaction with its readers.In contrast,The Guardian hardly employs the specific reporting diction,which reflects its absolute attitudes on its stances.Meanwhile,it declines the interaction with its readers.Thirdly,the source of the differences in reporting the same event mainly lies in the differing ideologies constructed in mind,influenced by the social and cultural aspects.Both media share the attention to environment protection with Chinese media who holds the ecological protection ecosophy,while the British media convicting the ecological fuzziness ecosophy.This thesis not only contributes to extending the scope of the application of Appraisal system,especially the engagement system;giving a new perspective to the news discourse analysis,particularly for the comparative research.It also shows its significance in the theoretical and practical support for language pedagogy and study in promoting students’ understanding of colorful cultures,helping them to recognize the contrasts in culture in Chinese and British media,enabling them to move forward in linguistic expressions in both media.