The Self-other Molding Of China’s Technological Image Based On Appraisal Theory

National image plays an important role in international competition.Besides political and economic aspects,technological image is also an important part of national image.Technological report is one of important ways to construct technological image of a country.Technological reports seem to convey latest progress in science and technology in an objective and fair way,however,it actually implies attitudes and values of media,which constantly affect readers and build national image of a country.The western world controls international discourse for a long time,which makes international community’s understanding of China’s national image one-sided.The construction of China’s technological national image doesn’t match technological strength.The Appraisal Theory makes up for the deficiency of SFL in its interpersonal meaning,which is helpful in revealing ideology in discourse.With corpus method,this study will apply appraisal theory to investigating distribution characteristics of each appraisal resources,similarities and differences of application of resources,and technological national image constructed in China-related technological reports in China and US media.With “China” and “technology” as key words,this study collects 40 Chinarelated technological reports from mainstream China and US media.20 reports are from China Daily,and 20 reports are from The New York Times,the contents of which cover hot topics such as 5G,intelligent transportation,quantum computing,vaccine development and space technology.Then,the author builds two corpora which contain 18377 and 22470 words respectively and annotates manually appraisal resources in two corpora with UAM Corpus Tool.Appraisal resources in two corpora are analyzed and contrasted with quantitative and qualitative methods.This study has found out similarities and differences in constructing China’s technological national image with appraisal resources by China and US media as follows:First of all,in distribution of attitude resources,appreciation resources account for the largest proportion in Chinese media.In the US media,judgment resources account for the largest proportion.In terms of the polarity of attitude resources,positive attitude resources in Chinese media exceeds the negative attitude resources,while some negative attitude resources in US media exceed positive resources.Through attitude resources,Chinese media construct China’s national image as a country with advanced technology whose people are confident about the prospect of technological development,while US media acknowledge China’s technological strength on the one hand,but show their doubts and regard China as a threat on the other hand.Secondly,engagement resources take up the largest proportion in both China and US media.However,the contents China and US media use engagement resources to express are different.Chinese media make use of alternative voices to help build positive technological image,while US media make use of dialogical spaces created by entertain and attribute resources to express doubts about Chinese technology,which is disadvantageous for the construction of China’s national image.Thirdly,graduation resources take up the least proportion in both China and US media.Graduation resources don’t have positive or negative meanings themselves.China’s media use graduation resources to strengthen national image of technological power,while US media use graduation resources to reinforce their views that Chinese technology causes threat.To sum up,this study creatively applies appraisal theory to the construction of national technological image,which uses appraisal theory to analyze a practical problem rather than analyzes certain resources in the discourse.It will not only enrich practice of appraisal theory but also provide a new idea for national image analysis.The contrastive analysis of China-related technological reports also provides reference for Chinese media to build a positive technological image in international communication.In addition,the analysis of implied attitudes and values is also beneficial to improve readers’ understanding of technological reports.