The Identity Construction Of Positive Characters In Reports Of Public Health Emergencies:From The Perspective Of Individuation

With the development of technology,news discourse exerts an increasingly significant impact on people in this information age.In particular,news reports of public health emergencies show their considerable influence in recent years.Many linguistics scholars at home and abroad conduct identity research from the linguistic perspective.In contrast,few researchers explore identity construction in news discourse,especially the identity construction of positive characters in public health emergencies reports.Based on Martin’s Individuation Theory from Systemic Functional Linguistics,this thesis employs UAM Corpus Tool and adopts qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze 60 reports(43655 characters)about the COVID-19 epidemic.This thesis investigates how these reports construct identities of positive characters by using affect resources,judgement resources,and appreciation resources.The present study intends to answer the following questions: 1)How do attitudinal resources construct the identity of positive characters in reports of public health emergencies? 2)What are the similarities of prosodic structures in the identity construction of positive characters in the reports of public health emergencies? 3)what are the differences in the distribution of judgement resources in the identity construction of positive characters?The significant findings of this research can be concluded as follows.First of all,through statistical analysis,reports of public health emergencies all use affect resources,judgement resources and appreciation resources to construct identities of positive characters.These attitudinal resources construct positive characters featuring competence,endurance and enthusiasm in the fight against the COVID-19 epidemic.Secondly,identity construction of positive characters in reports of public health emergencies shares similarities in prosodic structures.Two kinds of prosodic structures exist,intensifying prosodic structure and dominating prosodic structure.The ideational targets in each intensifying prosody are the same and attitudinal meanings’ polarities in each intensifying prosody are the same;while in each dominating prosody,ideational targets are usually different.in each dominating prosody,one ideational target is specified into several ideational targets and attitudinal meanings highlight different qualities of positive characters.Thirdly,in reports of positive characters,there are mainly two kinds of ideational targets,authorities and non-authorities.The distribution of judgment resources in the identity construction of positive characters is uneven between reports of authorities and non-authorities.Capacity accounts for the highest proportion in the reports of authorities.Therefore,these capacity resources can promote the identity construction of authorities with capacity.While the tenacity resources are the most prominent in the reports about non-authorities.Hence,these tenacity resources can facilitate the identity construction of brave,persevere and selfless non-authorities.The major findings of this thesis have important theoretical and practical significance.Theoretically,the present study is conducive to enriching and expanding the pertinent research and can provide references for related studies.Practically,the present study provides some implications for the writing of following news reports about positive characters in public health emergencies.