A Discourse Analysis of the Reports about One Belt One Road from the Perspective of Appraisal Theory

牟書節(jié)

Abstract：This paper analyzes a news report about the One Belt One Road Initiative in China from China Daily. Taking the One Belt One Road Initiative as an example，this paper aims to make a qualitative analysis，and try to figure out the Chinese media’s attitude toward One Belt One Road Initiative through the discourse analysis. Based on the appraisal theory，the paper mainly discusses from three subsystems of the appraisal system. Chinese media’s discourse strategy reflects their emphasis on One Belt One Road. This paper will explain how Chinese media have built China’s image in the One Belt One Road as a good friend of the other countries in the program through discourse.

Key words：discourse analysis;appraisal theory;One Belt One Road

1. Background

In September and October of 2013，Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed strategic conception of jointly building the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-century Maritime Silk Road successfully，which attracts high attention from the international community. In order to find out how Chinese media built the China’s image in One Belt One Road through discourse，the author applies the appraisal theory to analyze the discourse of a news report from China Daily about One Belt One Road. Through this discourse analysis，the author believes that we could infer that China’s attitude towards One Belt One Road Initiative is positive，and the advantage of appraisal theory is that we could find many positive factors from the discourse analysis.

2. Theoretical Framework

This study mainly carries out the discourse analysis of the text from the perspective of three subsystems of the appraisal system：attitude，engagement，and graduation. Attitude includes judgement，affect，and appreciation. Engagement refers to the opinions that the writer of a certain text shows through his or her text. In other words，it’s a way that writers engage their own views into the text. It can be achieved through monogloss or heterogloss. Graduation is a classification of the degree of attitudes and engagements. It has two subsystems：force and focus.

3. Analysis

Firstly，the first subsystem of appraisal system is attitude，which includes three subsystems：affect，judgment，appreciation. Affect can be expressed by verbs（love/hate），adverbs（happily/sadly），adjectives（happy/angry），and nouns（happiness/despair），including three evaluative dimensions：happy/unhappy，safe/unsafe，satisfied/dissatisfied. At the beginning of the news，it uses “capture the imagination” to show a positive attitude toward the One Belt One Road. The usage of “appreciable” also indicates the positive attitude. The second subsystem is engagement，which refers to the writer’s opinions through the discourse，it mainly discusses how writers of texts convey their own ideas through discourse. In monogloss，the writer of the news report claims his own idea by excluding other voices，for example，“Hence，despite being focused on the economic realm，the smooth implementation of the initiative requires a sound global security order.” It points out the urgent need for a sound global security order and try to make the readers believe that. And in heterogloss，there are several voices that are presented. The third subsystem is graduation，which is the classification of the degree of attitude and engagement. In the attitude part，“appreciable progress has been made in advancing them with various countries and regions.” the use of “various” indicates the wild range of the progress，which suggests high degree of positive attitude towards the One Belt One Road Initiative.

4. Conclusion

We could see from the above analysis that it is a valuable way to make discourse analysis under the framework of appraisal theory. The advantage of the appraisal theory is to evaluate the implicit attitudes that the text wants to convey. Through the analysis of the appraisal resources，we could infer that the Chinese media uses the discourse approaches to construct the corporate and friendly image of China in the One Belt One Road Initiative. By using different evaluating words，inviting different voices into the text，the Chinese media indicates that China has a positive attitude toward One Belt One Road，and wish to build a new global security order.

References：

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