Positive Discourse Analysis Of China’s Energy Cooperation News Reports From The Perspective Of Appraisal Theory

Energy discourse carries the ideology of a country and is an important index and construction element in energy soft power.The study of energy discourse can not only reflect the social reality,affect the formulation of energy policies in different countries,but also guide people’s cognition and understanding of energy issues.In the context of the “Belt and Road Initiative”,it is very important to correctly and positively interpret the reports related to China’s energy cooperation.Appraisal Theory focuses on lexical meaning analysis,which is used to discuss the attitude,emotion and ideology of the discourse or discourse subjects.It is the main guide of positive discourse analysis.This research collects 56 news reports with 20203 words about China’s international energy cooperation from the official website of China’s National Energy Administration and the corpus range from January 2018 to March 2020.On the basis of the Appraisal Theory,this paper applies the statistical software UAM Corpus Tool 3.3 to conduct a positive discourse analysis of the collected discourses in terms of quantitative research,qualitative research and cross-checking.Based on the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the corpus,this research has the following findings.Firstly,the overall distribution in the appraisal system shows that appraisal resources are widely used in the discourse,that is,the three systems are all involved in the materials,and the distribution is uneven.Among them,attitude resources account for the largest proportion,followed by engagement resources and graduation resources.Among the attitude resources,inclination and capacity resources account for a relatively large proportion.Among the engagement resources,acknowledge resources account for a large proportion.It is also one of the characteristics of energy news reports.Among the graduation resources,force resources occupy the majority.Secondly,the construction of positive meanings in attitude system is mainly realized through “evaluative lexis”.It fully expresses China’s energy strength and willingness to cooperate.The construction of positive meaning in engagement system is mainly realized on the basis of “dialogue”.While opening up the dialogue space and ensuring the authenticity and objectivity of the reports,it also reflects the inclusiveness and interactivity.The construction of positive meanings in graduation system is mainly realized through those upscale force resources.Their extensive use makes China’s positive attitude towards energy cooperation clearer.Thirdly,the function of appraisal resources in the corpus involves two levels.On the one hand,the three systems are interconnected.As the center of AT,attitude resources play the fundamental role in laying the tone of the discourse.Engagement resources are essentially the intervention of “attitude”.Graduation resources are concerned with up-scaling and down-scaling of attitude.On the other hand,in the process of constructing positive significance,attitude resources have the function of clarifying willingness and trustworthiness of China’s cooperation.Engagement resources guarantee the objectivity of the reports and reflect the respect for the outside voice.And the function of graduation resources is to further emphasize China’s growing energy strength and show the importance and necessity of international energy cooperation.Through the positive discourse analysis of China’s international energy reports,this research,on the one hand,broadens the research scope of the Appraisal Theory and enriches the research approaches of energy discourses,which is expected to provide valuable reference for future research of such texts.On the other hand,it will help people to make political interpretation of energy discourses,understand the positive meaning contained in it and promote the construction of a harmonious energy development and utilization environment.