A Positive Discourse Analysis Of The Micro-blog Of The U.S. Embassy In China From The Perspective Of Appraisal Theory

With the vigorous development of mobile Internet and self-media,government-affair micro-blogs,as the earliest,fastest developing,and most user-used new government media,have played a positive role in innovating social management,disclosing government information,guiding news and public opinion,mass political participation,and establishing government image.At the same time,in the context of globalization and informatization,more and more embassies in China register government-affair micro-blogs,to make use of the immediacy and interactive characteristics of micro-blogs,so that embassies can grasp the initiative to disseminate information,and then help achieve their diplomatic purposes,government-affair micro-blogs have gradually become a new type of diplomacy.In the wave of the development of the Internet and media,government-affair micro-blog,as one of the earliest new social media,has been becoming a new platform employed by government departments to advance government image,conduct public sentiment,and transform information.In the interim,against the backdrop of globalization and informationization,more and more embassies in China effectuate diplomatic goals by seizing news priority through the instantaneity and interactivity of micro-blog.Government-affair micro-blog has become a new pattern of diplomacy.As one of the earliest foreign Embassies registered on the Sina micro-blog,the U.S.Embassy in China conducts public diplomacy activities actively.The Sina micro-blog of the U.S.Embassy in China attracts a lot of public attention and quantity fans.Based on positive discourse analysis that employs the analytical framework of attitude,engagement and graduation system from the perspective of the Appraisal Theory,this paper takes a corpus of micro-blog discourses released by the U.S.Embassy in China from October 1,2021,to March 31,2022,as the research object,and relies on statistical program UAM Corpus Tool 3.3 for quantitative research on the purpose of analyzing the discursive strategies of the U.S.Embassy in China to express its attitude through micro-blog discourses.Furthermore,the paper also discusses the function of engagement and graduation subsystem in attitude expression.This paper concludes that a wealth of appraisal resources are used in the selected government-affair micro-blog discourses of the U.S.Embassy in China,the distributions of which are different.To be specific,attitude resources reach 41.24%,engagement resources take up 40.35%and graduation resources cover 18.14%.Positive appraisal resources take the greatest percentage in the three categories of appraisal resources,which is significant for the embassy to eliminate differences with Chinese netizens and to establish the nation’s image of a superpower with social justice,economic development,openness,and inclusiveness.The research holds that the micro-blog discourses of the U.S.Embassy in China indicate the strategy of shaping the diplomatic image of the United States.Through positive analysis of the government-affair micro-blog discourses posted by the U.S.Embassy in China,scholars can expand the scope of texts on positive discourse analysis as well as provide an effective reference for China’s future micro-blog diplomacy and the construction of a government image.