A Positive Discourse Analysis Of The Traditional Chinese Medicine In COVID-19 From Appraisal Theory

As a treasure of Chinese national culture,Traditional Chinese Medicine(TCM)makes unique contributions to propagating Chinese culture.TCM is beneficial for presenting Chinese culture.In recent years,TCM’s communication and propagation scope expands rapidly.The outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic in 2020 is a severe challenge to the world,which makes difficulties in the development of society and the lives of the public.The whole society fights against this virus actively.In this fight,TCM plays a pivotal role and embodies Chinese medicine’s unique advantage.TCM provides a critical reference experience for global disease resistance and promotes the international popularity of TCM to a certain extent.China Daily published many news reports about the effect of TCM in the fight against COVID-19.These news reports reflect the function of TCM in this fight.By analyzing the role of TCM in fighting COVID-19,it is helpful to clear up the effect of TCM and improve the international status of TCM.This study selects the news reports about the effect of TCM in the fight against COVID-19 as the research object,downloaded from the official website,China Daily.This study adopts Appraisal Theory as a framework to conduct a positive discourse analysis(PDA)on these news reports.It employs the UAM Corpus Tool 3.3m to annotate and count the appraisal resources.This study aims to figure out the types and distributive characteristics of appraisal resources in these news reports and further explore what positive discourse meanings of TCM conveyed to readers.Through detailed analysis,this thesis found the significant findings as follows.Firstly,these news reports employed all three subsystems of the appraisal system,including attitude,engagement,and graduation resources.Among appraisal systems,attitude resources are the most frequently used,and engagement resources are the least.Under the attitude system,judgment resources occupy the most significant proportion,these resources concerned about the evaluations of TCM which reflects that TCM’ capacity and reliability and its’ essential function of the fight against COVID-19.It also shows positive attitudes towards the substantial role in TCM.Secondly,in the engagement system,the use frequency of expansion resources is higher than that of contraction resources.The writers tend to show different people’s views of TCM,which improves the authenticity and comprehensiveness of TCM.Thirdly,force resources are the focus resources within the graduation system.Numerous force resources strengthen the affirmative attitude towards the effective measures and achievements of TCM,and further highlight the capacity and reliability of it.This research is beneficial to form a correct and deeper understanding of these news reports’ positive discourse meanings of TCM.On the one hand,TCM assists more countries and regions in fighting against COVID-19 and reaches numerous achievements in saving life,relieving symptoms,and many other aspects,which contributes to spread TCM to the world.On the other hand,through analyzing the different distributive characteristics of appraisal resources and the functions of these resources,it found that appraisal resources are favorable in spreading Chinese stories worldwide.There are some suggestions to further propagate TCM or other Chinese thoughts could be concluded.