Chapter One Introduction
The thesis focuses on the application of Appraisal Theory in the editorial discourseanalysis. The chapter begins with background of the thesis, purpose of the thesis, significanceof the thesis and organization of the thesis.
1.1 Background of the Thesis
In modern society, mass communication plays a substantially significant role andbecomes an important part of daily life. Therefore, news discourse attracts more and moreattention. There are three sub-genres of news discourse: news, feature and editorial. News andfeature mainly focus on reporting objective fact and conveying information to readers. Ratherthan simply reporting news fact, editorial makes timely comments, expresses their opinionsand stances and influences the public’s judgments and viewpoints on important events at homeand abroad. The stance of editorial is on behalf of the newspaper’s position rather thanpersonal position, so editorial is more authoritative and convinced. Because of the importance,linguistics and scholars pay attention to the study of editorial and have studied editorial fromdifferent perspectives in various domains such as structure and rhetorical characteristics andideology. Though studies of editorial are prosperous, the engagement resources in editorials donot get enough attention.According to M.A.K.Halliday (1989: 994), there are three meta-functions of language:ideational function, textual function and interpersonal function. Among the three functions,interpersonal function of language refers to negotiating social relationship: how people interactwith each other and how the relationships are established, maintained and changed inconversations. However, most studies of interpersonal meaning in the framework of SFL focuson the mood and modality while others means such as semantic evaluation is only simplymentioned and hardly neglected. In order to make up for the limitation, Jame R.Martin and hiscolleges put forward a new theory--appraisal theory in 1990s, which is seen as a complementand breakthrough of interpersonal meaning. Appraisal theory refers to linguistic resources bywhich speakers/writers express the viewpoints, show instances and align or disalign with actualor putative listeners/speakers. It emphasizes the language of evaluation, attitude and emotion.With a set of appraisal resources, a text’s propositions and findings will be positionedobviously.
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1.2 Purpose of the Thesis
The thesis aims to explore what kinds of engagement resources have been employed inthe English editorials in order to express their ideas and their stances and persuade the putativereaders; how these engagement resources are distributed in editorials; and most importantly,how interpersonal meaning in editorial is realized through engagement resources, that is to say,how the engagement resources realize the negotiation between the writer and readers.The significance of the present study falls into the theoretical and practical domains.Theoretically, on one hand, it can broaden the scope of Appraisal Theory’s applicationespecially engagement resources. Most of the attention about appraisal theory are paid to theattitudinal system rather than engagement system. On the other hand, it adds a new angle forEnglish editorials and enriches the content of English editorials. Because of editorial’simportance in newspaper, many researchers concentrate their energy on editorials. Howe，英语论文，英语毕业论文 |
