A Study Of The Construction Of China’s National Image In News Reports Of Tokyo Olympics From The Perspective Of Appraisal Theory

Appraisal Theory is a new framework developed by systemic functional linguistics in the study of interpersonal meaning.Appraisal Theory is concerned with the language of evaluation through which speakers or writers express their attitudes,emotions and stance.For its evaluative function,it is widely applied in the studies of different discourses with different methods for specific purposes.Research on construction of national image through analysis of different discourses based on Appraisal Theory is one of the topics of such study.National image is the image of a country in the international community,or the image of a country in the minds of people in other countries.It can reflect a country’s comprehensive strength and national spirit as well as its international prestige and influence.Therefore,the shaping of national image has long attracted scholars of every country,and researchers both at home and abroad have conducted studies of how national image is constructed through analysis of different discourses including sports news.With its special nature of the Olympic Games,Games of the Tokyo Olympic offered media of all countries a great opportunity to construct images of their own to enhance their international prestige.However,so far,few researches have been carried out on news reports on Games of the Tokyo Olympic to reveal the construction of national image.Taking this into consideration,the present study is to research on how China’s national image is constructed through the analysis of news reports in China Daily on Games of the Tokyo Olympic 2021 from the perspective of Appraisal Theory.Results show that 1,584 appraisal resources were used cumulatively in the three subsystems,out of which 783 are graduation resources occupying 49.43%,415 attitude resources taking the proportion of 26.20% and 386 engagement resources accounting for 24.37%.The preference of using graduation resources most implies that the writers intend to strongly amplify their feelings in constructing or protecting China’s national image since graduation resources concern tense or degree of the appraisal by turning volume up or down.1.Of the 783 graduation resources,force resources amounted to 753 occupying as much as 96.17% while focus resources are only 30 taking up 3.83%.The writers used force resources most frequently to express their positive evaluation of the Chinese athletes’ performances since force may intensify or increase amount of scaling which reinforce the shaping of a positive national image of China.2.Of the 415 attitude resources,142 are of affect,107 of judgement and 166 of appreciate occupying 34.22%,25.78%,and 40.00%,respectively.The most used appreciation resources indicate that the writers speak highly of China’s strength and of Chinese athletes by way in which China’s national image is constructed as appreciation stresses the category of aesthetics and evaluation of texts and phenomena by language users in accordance with the aesthetic needs of society at large.3.Of the 386 engagement resources concerning dialogic contraction and dialogic expansion resources studied,the writers used 180 dialogic contraction resources taking up 46.63% and 206 dialogic expansion resources occupying 53.37%.This suggests that the writers employed both resources often to support his or her evaluation,the writers use dialogic contraction resources to condemn inaccurate reports that slander the image of Chinese athletes,and reporters use dialogic expansion resources to accommodate the attitudes of others.The results of the study show that the writers constructed a positive national image of China through news reports on the Tokyo Olympics in China Daily under the combined effect of three subsystems of Appraisal Theory.Various resources of appraisal in the sports news reports of the Tokyo Olympics are associated with the excellent performance of Chinese athletes.The excellent performance of Chinese athletes can profoundly reflect China’s excellent cultural soft power,reflect our patriotism,unity,peace-loving,hard-working and brave national spirit of self-improvement.The positive national image of our country is shaped.