Research On Evaluative Resources In China Daily’s Reports On COVID-19

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 in early 2020,scholars from all walks of life around the world have paid extensive attention to it.News report refers to the dissemination process of recent facts by news media,which is one of the important channels for communication between the media and the public.Its primary function is to disseminate and inform the public of the relevant information needed,with certain social attributes and objectivity.Therefore,news reports should not only present news value,but also express attitudes and standpoints towards a specific event.As a resource for achieving interpersonal meaning,evaluative language has important research significance for analyzing news reports.Therefore,this study takes the study of evaluative language in news reports from the perspective of evaluation theory as the starting point,analyzes the news content and news context in the current news reporting of the COVID-19,aims to examine the characteristics of the use of evaluative language in news reporting,and reveals how the vocabulary selection and related descriptions in news reporting express realistic interpersonal meanings and implied ideologies in order to achieve more effective and meaningful news reporting.This will help news writers to make better use of evaluative language and to improve their literacy skills in news reports.This study selected 150 news reports on COVID-19 published by China Daily from 2021 to2022 as the research corpus.With the help of the corpus tagging software UAM Corpus Tool3.3v and the data analysis and processing software SPSS 26.0,under the guidance of the Appraisal Theory,combined with the research methods of the corpus,this study explored the evaluation resources in the news reports on the COVID-19.The similarities and differences in the use of evaluative resources in news reports are analyzed in terms of three dimensions:Attitude,Engagement and Graduation,and the application of Appraisal Theory to news reports is further studied.The main results of this study are as follows:(1)On the whole,there are abundant evaluative language resources in China Daily’s reports on the COVID-19,and the evaluative resources in the same system are expressed in a variety of words and phrases with a variety of forms.(2)In Attitude resources,according to the Chi-square test results,there is a significant difference in the use of Appreciation resources,Affect resources,and Judgment resources(p=0.000<0.05).The use of Appreciation resources is significantly more than that of Judgment resources and Affect resources,and the use of the three in the corpus shows a declining trend,with a relatively uneven distribution.(3)In the Engagement resources,there is a significant difference in the use of Expand resources and Contract resources(p=0.000<0.05),and Expand resources are more abundant in the corpus.(4)Among the Graduation resources,there is a significant difference(p=0.000<0.05)in the use of Force and Focus resources,with more Focus resources being used than Force resources.The main findings of this study are as follows:(1)In the news report on COVID-19,there are significant differences in the use of evaluative resources among different systems.In recent years,evaluative language has become more and more diverse in news reports.Therefore,we need to focus more on developing writers’ understanding and use of evaluative resources to enrich news reports.(2)Among Attitudinal resources,news reports prefer to use Appreciative resources to express attitudes and opinions in order to ensure objectivity and authenticity.Among them,Judgment resources are mainly reflected in the corpus as objective judgments in treating facts.The least use of Affect resources indicates that the authors do not tend to overstate the atmosphere and highlight their personal thoughts and feelings when conveying the content and facts of news reports in order to avoid misleading readers’ judgment when dealing with objective facts.(3)Among Engagement resources,the author prefers to use Expand resources to further expand the dialogue space and achieve the purpose of communication and exchange with readers.News reports quoted national authorities to enhance the authenticity and reliability of news dissemination and to instill public confidence in the country’s capabilities and to joint efforts to combat COVID-19.(4)Among Graduation resources,news reports use high grade resources of vocabulary or grammar in many places to highlight the author’s point of view,position or one aspect of the event,or use low grade resources to weaken other aspects of the event.It is hoped that the evaluation resources can be used to draw the public into the direction intended by the news reports,to give full voice to the public in the news coverages,and to convey the determination and confidence that the epidemic will eventually be won and that we will overcome it.On the basis of providing a new perspective for future relevant scholars to study news reports,this study can help learners understand the changing characteristics of the use of evaluative language in news reports,so that the public can more objectively and comprehensively interpret news reports about the COVID-19,and deeply understand the attitudes and emotions of news reports expressed or communicated by evaluative language.