A Contrastive Study Of Chinese And American COVID-19 News Reports From The Perspective Of Appraisal Theory

Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2019,the Chinese and foreign media have been paying close attention to the various measures taken by the Chinese government to respond to the epidemic,and the relevant reports have also occupied a significant page of their mainstream media.Discourse analysis of different media reports on COVID-19 can deconstruct the news writers’ reconstruction of news facts,the social ideology woven into the news discourse,and the readers’ attitudes and positions towards the reconstructed news facts.As an extension of interpersonal meaning in systemic functional linguistics,Appraisal Theory is a powerful tool for discourse analysis,especially for news discourse.Therefore,this study aims to provide readers with a framework for an in-depth interpretation of the COVID-19 report and the deep meaning hidden behind the news facts.So far,the studies on the reports of COVID-19 have mainly been conducted from the perspective of journalism and communication.Studies in linguistics are conducted from a single perspective,which needs to be more systematic.Based on Appraisal Theory,the main task of this thesis is to compare the similarities and differences of the distribution features of attitude,engagement,and graduation resources employed in The New York Times and People’s Daily.Quantitative and qualitative research is conducted on the news reports concerning the COVID-19 situation in China by two self-built corpora,with 345 reports in English and 692 in Chinese.In addition,all these news reports collected from the representative American and Chinese media are divided into four parts according to the four development stages of the COVID-19 epidemic in China to determine the changing trend of appraisal resources applied in the two media.The result shows that:(1)in terms of the changing trend of the employment of three semantic regions of Appraisal Theory,the distribution of attitude resources changed most significantly in the four development stages of the epidemic,and the distribution of engagement and graduation resources occasionally fluctuated in the four development stages,but basically the same.(2)Regarding distribution characteristics,The New York Times and People’s Daily applied rich appraisal resources in their reports on China’s COVID-19.Among them,graduation resources account for the most significant proportion in The New York Times and the smallest proportion in People’s Daily;Attitude resources are most frequently distributed in People’s Daily.(3)In terms of the interpersonal meaning manifested in the appraisal resources,as for attitude resources,The New York Times tends to use the negative dis/inclination resources to randomly guess the intentions of China’s various epidemic prevention measures and use the negative dis/satisfaction resources to condemn the behaviors of the Chinese government in the process of epidemic prevention.People’s Daily tends to use satisfaction resources to express the appreciation of the Chinese people and the international community for China’s achievements in the fight against the epidemic.The capability and tenacity resources appreciate the ability and responsibility of the Chinese government and medical staff.In terms of engagement resources,The New York Times uses more dialogic expansive resources,which seems to expand the space for alternative voices,but actually only accepts the voices consistent with the report;People’s Daily employed more dialogic contractive and reduced the space for negotiating with other voices.In China’s view,fighting the epidemic and protecting people’s safety and health are not negotiable.The distribution of graduation resources is similar.Both newspapers tend to use positive intensification resources to strengthen the tone and make their news report more convincing.Through the comparison and analysis of Chinese and American media reports on the COVID-19 epidemic in China,this study expands the scope of Appraisal Theory as well as providing a new perspective on the study of news discourse analysis,and,to a certain extent,helps readers to get rid of their thoughts being affected by invisible ideologies.