A Comparative Analysis Of Attitudinal Resources In Reports By Chinese And American Media On UN Climate Change Conference

News Discourse is seen as the factual description of related events.However,it may be maneuvered by reporters with linguistic devices to transmit their own personal attitude on related events.Attitude,as one subsystem of Appraisal Theory,expresses emotion,judges people’s character and evaluates the worth of things.For its evaluative function,it is widely applied in discourse analysis such as news discourse to analyze speaker’s or writer’s attitude embodied in texts.In recent studies,news reports on the26^th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties（COP26）,a convention of climate change,attached much attention.However,few studies have been conducted involving Attitude of Appraisal Theory to make a comparative analysis of news reports on COP26.For this reason,this study tried to make a comparative analysis of attitude resources employed in news reports on COP26 published in China Daily and The New York Times by Chinese and American media based on the Attitude System adopting both quantitative and qualitative methods to explore the distribution and features of attitudinal resources and the similarities and differences in the implement of attitudinal resources of Chinese and American media.There are totally 30 pieces of news reports selected from the websites of China Daily and The New York for their high authorities and influences in the world.The major findings are as follows:（1）In China Daily,468 attitudinal resources were adopted,out of which 135 are of Affect,138 of Judgement and 195 of Appreciation respectively occupying 28.8%,29.5%and 41.7%,while in The New York Times,of the 689 attitudinal resources,195are of Affect,150 of Judgement and 344 of Appreciation taking up 28.3%,21.8%and49.9%respectively.These results reflect the general tendency that the American media prefer to employ more attitude resources than the Chinese.As for attitude polarity,China Daily employed in proportion more positive resources（242/51.7%）than negative resources（209/44.7%）and ambiguous resources（17/3.6%）,while The New York Times adopted more negative resources（429/62.3%）than the positive（246/35.7%）and the ambiguous（14/2%）.As for explicitness,explicit resources occupied（444/94.9%）in China Daily much more than the invoked（24/5.1%）,while in The New York Times they amounted to 657 occupying 95.4%,and the invoked added up to 32 taking up 4.5%.These indicates that explicit resources in the two papers are almost the same in proportion although there is difference in amount.As regard to appraiser resources,in China Daily the writers acting as appraiser took up 338/72.2%,while other appraisers shared 130/27.8%and in The New York Times,there were 469 appraiser resources taking up 71%in which the writers act as appraisers and 200 occupying 29%where others act as the appraiser.（2）The similarities are as follows.Findings illustrate that both China Daily and The New York Times tended to employ more appreciation resources than those of judgement and affect,both inclined to employ explicit far more than the implicit and both reporters more frequently act as appraiser than others and both Impact and Quality resources are used more by both although there are gaps in frequency and proportion.（3）The biggest difference is that appreciation resources in The New York Times is obviously a lot more than these in China Daily（172:97）.By contrast,China Daily employed positive resources most frequently,while in The New York Times negative resources occupy the largest proportion.Cultural differences between the western and Chinese might be the cause of the gaps in attitudinal resources employment on COP26 in China Daily and The New York Times.American culture is more direct,so people are more open and extroverted in speaking their mind.In contrast,individuals are expected to show modesty in Chinese culture,so the Chinese are more considerate and introverted in expressing their ideas.