基于评价理论视角下的积极话语分析
Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Research Background of the Study
Newspaper is a type of important language form. It is of significance to understand the role it plays in society. It has massively affected people’s knowledge and values, and to a great extent, this kind of power lies in the use of language. As one of the most popular mass medias in our daily life, news discourse is the core of news language research. Through news discourse, people can get access to the latest information. Of course, it serves not only as the source of information and entertainment, but also subtly alters people’s thoughts and beliefs. As we all know, news reflects the objective facts and one of the primary features of news discourse is truthfulness, so people tend to believe that news discourse should be value-free and impersonal. However, this is not the case. Just as the conversation has communicators, news discourse has its writers and readers. So, it can be regarded as a special type of conversation. In the news discourse, the reporter is just like the communicators in the conversation. Disastrous news discourse is a representative of all types of news discourse because it is closely related to people’s life and human security. Disaster refers to grave damage to human’s life that is natural or man-made. The disaster can be divided into two categories: one is natural disasters that can not be prevented, such as earthquakes, floods, typhoons and so on; the other is human-caused disasters, like terrorism, war, plane crash, traffic accidents and so on. In my view, the missing of MH370 belongs to the “third” category, which is neither natural disaster nor human-caused disaster, or in other words, the reason of the missing of MH370 is not certain. However, the impacts of disasters on human life and properties is rather devastating. Thus, as soon as the event happens, it becomes the focus of &le that people can escape from the influence of certain news in modern society. However, what is news? There is no specific answer to the question. Scholars from different fields have attempted to come up with different definitions of news. They put forward various definitions of news from different views, but none of them gain unanimous acceptance around the world. In order to understand what news discourse is, it is necessary for us to make a clear definition of news firstly. Of course, the definitions differ in the emphasis that one puts. Oxford English Dictionary and Longman Dictionary of English Language & Culture put the emphasis on the content of news discourse. The former defines news as “tidings, the recent happened events, the new information, the new subject of a report.” The latter defines it as “facts that are reported about a recent event or events”. W. Lance Bennett and John Bogart pay more attention to the features of news discourse. Bennett (1988) states that news usually refers to the timely information. And Bogart, once remarked “When a dog bites a man, that is not news, but when a man bites a dog that is big news”.
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2.2 Classifications of News Discourse
Based on different criteria, news discourse can be classified into various categories. Several common divisions are introduced here: According to the content of reporting, news can be involved in many aspects, including political aspects, economic aspects, technological aspects, cultural and entertainment aspects and sports aspects and so on. In terms of the means of conveying, news is grouped into newspaper coverage, photo news, magazine coverage, radio news, TV news, cable news and web news, etc. When it comes to the news stylistics, news is grouped into newspaper report, press interview, news comment and news feature and so on. Regarding to the geographical scope of news reporting, news is grouped into international ones, national ones and local ones. On considering the character of news, there exist two kinds of news discourse: hard news and soft news (Rich, 2005. p. 23): “In general, hard news means the latest news and events that are reported timely, such as politics news, economic news etc.; soft news refers to background information or stories related to people’s interests including art news and entertainment news and so on.”
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Chapter Three Theoretical Foundation ....... 17
3.1 Appraisal Theory ........... 17
3.1.1 Attitude System ............. 18
3.1.2 Engagement System ...... 24
3.1.3 Graduation System ........ 25
3.2 Positive Discourse Analysis .............. 26
Chapter Four Data Analysis and Discussion ......... 28
4.1 Data Analysis ...... 28
4.2 PDA of the Selected News Reports: Attitude System Perspective ..... 29
4.3 PDA of the Selected News Reports: Engagement System Perspective ........ 42
4.3.1 Monogloss in the reports ......... 42
4.3.2 Heterogloss in the reports ....... 45
4.3.3 Summary ............. 50
4.4 PDA of the Selected News Reports: Graduation System Perspective .......... 50
4.5 Summary ............. 53
Chapter Five Conclusion ........ 55
5.1 Main Findings ..... 55
5.2 Limitations and Suggestions ............. 55
Chapter Four Data Analysis and Discussion
4.1 Data Analysis
This chapter will carry out a concrete PDA of the selected news reports from perspective of attitude system, engagement system and graduation system, which are the three sub-systems in AT. The following are respectively the titles and date of the ten reports: “154 Chinese missing” on March 9th; “Chinese Artists’ Group on Board MH370” on March 9th; “The Search for Flight 370 Goes on” on March 10th; “Families Urge Expanded Search for Missing Flight as Their Hopes Fade” on March 11th; “Mayor: Sansha Should Have Marine Rescue Base” on March 11th; “Obama Voices Sympathy” on March 11th; “Insurance Companies May Face Large Payouts in Airline Disaster” on March 12th; “Quicken Efforts to Find Plane, Malaysia asked” on March 13th; “The Biggest Mystery” on March 13th and “Q&A: Experts Offers Their Insights on MH370 Mystery” on March 14th. Just throughout the ten titles, we can see that four articles are involved in the search and rescue work which should be carried out in a timely and effective manner; two of them refers to the nature of the incident: a mystery; two articles mainly talk about the attitudes of other countries’ authorities towards the incident: Obama voices sympathy and Malaysia asks quicken efforts to find plane; the last two articles mentioned the total number of the missing Chinese people and the main occupational groups.
Conclusion
In the present study, through the specific analysis, we have proved what we pointed out in the first chapter. In my selected disastrous news discourse, judgemental meaning occupies the largest proportion in the attitudinal system. The next is the affective meaning, and then is the appreciative meaning. In front of the disaster, the government officials hold positive attitude towards the incident; they firmly believe that through our joint efforts, we can surely put the losses to the minimum degree. The attitudes of the families and the friends of the missing passengers changes with the information they get about the incident and the process of the search and rescue work. They become very sensitive to any information about the search and rescue work. Once the information about the incident is not optimistic, people’s emotion will become lower and lower until the collapse point. On the contrary, if people can read the positive news, then they will be full of confidence and energies. So in order to reduce the panic mood to the minimum state, journalists should try to use as much as positive languages on the basis of objectivity. Also, readers should see the positive aspects deeply hidden in the language and face the irresistible disaster with a relatively positive attitude.
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The reference (omitted)
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