积极话语分析
您的位置： → 人文社科 →
积极话语分析
积极话语分析语言学结业论文ContentsAbstract.....................................................................................................................................................I Keywords………………………………………………………………………………………….......I 摘要……………………………………………………………………………………………………II 关键词…………………………………………………………………………………………………IIIntroduction.....................................................................................................................1I Literature Review.................................................................................................................................7II Theoretical Framework: Positive Discourse Analysis.....................................................................9A. Attitude...........................................................................................................................91. Affect..........................................................................................................................92. Judgment...................................................................................................................93. Appreciation..............................................................................................................9B Engagement ..................................................................................................................101. Dialogic Expansion ................................................................................................102. Dialogic Contraction..............................................................................................10C. Graduation...................................................................................................................101. Focus........................................................................................................................102. Force........................................................................................................................10III Data Collection.................................................................................................................................11IV PDA of Radio Address.....................................................................................................................12A. Attitude System Perspective.......................................................................................121. Affective Meaning..................................................................................................132. Judgmental Meaning.............................................................................................153. Appreciative Meaning............................................................................................16B. Engagement System Perspective................................................................................181. Dialogic Contraction..............................................................................................182. Dialogic Expansion.................................................................................................20C. Graduation System Perspective.................................................................................221. Force........................................................................................................................222. Focus........................................................................................................................23D. Summary.......................................................................................................................24Conclusion......................................................................................................................25Work Cited....................................................................................................................28Acknowledgment.........................................................................................................29IIAbstractAs a growing method of discourse analysis, the positive discourse analysis (PDA) introduced by Martin has been attracted increasing attention compared critical discourse analysis (CDA). The complementary theory of CDA makes it possible to analyze types of discourse from a productive perspective. With the purpose of positively analyzing the addresser’s real intention, the thesis makes a study on a piece of Obama’s weekly address about the government shutdown based on Appraisal Theory in its three subsystems, namely affect, judgment and appreciation. The study comes to the conclusion that the speaker is seeking the cooperation between two parties for reopening the government instead of simply criticizing Republicans. It also illustrates the applicability of Appraisal Theory with its advantages and disadvantages.Key WordsPDA; Appraisal T radio addressIII摘要作为新兴的话语分析方法，由马丁教授提出的积极话语分析得到越来越多的关注。该理论与批评话语分析互为补充，为话语分析提供一种建设性的视角。本文应用评价理论，从态度、介入和级差等三个子系统出发，对一篇关于美国政府摇摆事件的奥巴马电台进行积极话语分析，试图以积极的方式探究话语者的真实意图。本文最后得出结论，即演讲者试图寻求两党合作以政府摇摆，而不是单单批评共和党。同时，本文也通过其优缺点，阐述了评价理论的可应用性。关键词积极话语分析；评价理论；电台演讲IIIntroductionDiscourse analysis (DA) gradually becomes the important branch subject of the linguistic since 1970s, but this area has long been dominated by critical discourse analysis (CDA) which turn out not to be able to resolve all the problems. Therefore the famous linguist Martin introduced the new method--positive discourse analysis (PDA) as the supplementary and development theory for CDA.PDA itself is regionalized as three interacting domains―“attitude” “engagement” and “graduation”, which are also called “evaluative” resources. Among them, attitude is concerned with our feelings, including emotional reactions, judgments of behavior and evaluation of things (滕 9). As for engagement, it is related to the linguistic resources which provide the means for the authorial voice to position itself, and hence to “engage” with. Graduation is concerned with values which function to provide grading or scaling.
Since its discovery, PDA has been applied to various genres and text types to study the evaluative resources and investigate the ideological positions in the writers or speakers since the mid-1990s. Among the various news types, few scholars have studied English political radio address on a discourse level by using PDA framework. So our group decided to use PDA to analyze the political radio address.This thesis takes the exhausted analysis of the Obama’s weekly radio address with the help of PDA. We need to explore the positive changes and bring closer to public consciousness about PDA, which prefers to be concerned with the positive meaning in the DA. The purpose of PDA is to construct the alignment and solidarity relationship and build up the harmonious society and peaceful world.As we all know radio address belongs to the public speech. It is one kind of political
IIIspeech and it is also informative, inspirational and persuasive, and the weekly radio address is an important way for the US President to express his or his party’s political ideal. This time, the Obama’s weekly radio address delivered under the situation that the two party’s conflict led to the government shutdown which greatly influenced the whole economy of United States. By using PDA to analyze the speech we can conclude that Obama laid more stress on the interests of the ordinary Americans not just the authority. Through it we can also see the contribution of PDA to construct harmonious and positive society and good interpersonal relationships and make a better world instead of the negative society to the ordinary people. Besides, we want to probe into the positive function of the radio address and prove that PDA is the indispensably complementary to CDA. More importantly, we want to identify the feasibility of PDA applied to the political discourse.The thesis has five parts. The first part is the introduction of the whole thesis which includes the background information and purpose. The second part includes the literature review which has shown the development and the prospect of PDA. The third part is the theoretical Framework:PDA. The three subsystems of this theory are presented one by one－attitude, engagement, graduation. The fourth part we use some methodological approaches and data collection to analyze the radio speech delivered by Obama. The last part is the conclusion.IVI. Literature ReviewBased on systemic functional linguistics, James R. Martin in the early 1990s firstly initiated the positive discourse analysis as a complementary theory for the critical discourse analysis. Initially the studies were concerned with the role of evaluation in narrative genres PDA is to investigate, describe and explain how the language is used to evaluate, to adopt stances, to construct textual personas and to manage interpersonal positions and relationships. In 2003, one special issue of text was devoted to the PDA framework, in which diversified approaches were taken for the reinforcement of the theory and its application. In 2007, Simon-Vandenbergen and others, in collaboration with White, study presupposition in mass communicated political argument within the appraisal framework.In China, PDA which was introduced by Zhang Delu and later Wang Zhenhua has been applied in studies by many scholars (滕 12). Since then the studies of PDA have been springing up. In 2002 Dai Fan applied the Appraisal Theory in analyzing the stylistic effects of the evaluative lexical sets in the text. Li Zhanzi summarized the application of PDA in analyzing commercial, historical and autobiographical utterances. In 2006 Guan Shuhong, Wang Yali and Luo Lingjuan attempted to explore the appraisal resources and its function of expressing the addresser’s position, viewpoint, and attitude evaluative lexical sets in the text (滕 12).Wherever in China or other countries, this new discourse analysis aroused great interest of many linguists and researchers. The emergence of the PDA makes it possible to analyze news discourse in a more systematic way. We can see that the evaluative study mainly focuses on the hard news, editorials and columns. The previous studies have not
Vonly tested the applicability of PDA system, but also shown new insights into PDA study related to other perspectives. It is evident that news discourse analysis with PDA is benefited by associating with the perspective of CDA (滕 12). Based on development of CDA, PDA can reveal the attitude and ideology in news discourse better and deeper than CDA. Since PDA is questioned by some scholars for its limits of analyzing the discourse, its method should be further clarified and improved and its analysis practice needs to be further developed and enriched. There is no doubt that positive discourse analysis is a promising development and will become the mainstream of the development of discourse analysis.VIII. Theoretical Framework: Positive Discourse AnalysisA. AttitudeAttitude mainly refers to those values by which speakers attach assessment to participants and processes by reference either to emotional responses or to systems of culturally-determined value systems (滕20). The attitude system includes three parts: affect, judgment and appreciation.1. AffectAffect is the characterization of phenomena related to emotion. It is concerned with emotional response and disposition and is typically realized through mental processes of reaction and through attributive relational of affect. In fact, values of affect occur as either positive or negative categories. Values of affect provide one of possibly the most obvious ways that a speaker can adopt a stance towards some phenomenonCthey provide the resources by which the speaker can indicate how that phenomenon affected them emotionally, to appraise that phenomenon in effectual terms (滕 20).2. JudgmentJudgment deals with attitudes towards behavior, which we admire or criticize, praise or condemn.It’s mainly concerned with human behavior. Judgment can be divided into two groups, one dealing with social esteem and the other oriented to social sanction. Judgments of esteem and judgment of sanction are further broken down into five sub-categories. Social esteem have to do with normality, capacity and tenacity and social sanction include veracity and propriety (滕 20).3. AppreciationAppreciation is the system for the evaluations of plans and policies and
VIImanufactured and natural objects. It is largely concerned with aesthetics, with positive or negative assessments of the form, appearance, construction, presentation or impact of objects and entities.B. EngagementEngagement is concerned with the ways in which resources such as projection, modality, polarity, concession and various comment adverbials position one opinion in relation to another by quoting or reporting, acknowledging a possibility, denying, countering, affirming and so on. The engagement system include two major part: dialogic expansion and dialogic contraction.1. Dialogic expansionAttribute and entertain are contained by dialogic expansion. Attribute is the method to separate the text’s internal authorial voice by linking with external voices. Entertain conveys meanings via which author makes assessments by using words like may, might, could, and must.2. Dialogic contractionIt has disclaim and proclaim. Disclaim means that some dialogic alternative is directly rejected or replaced and includes deny and counter-expect while proclaim means by which, through some authorial interpolation, emphasis or intervention, dialogic alternatives are confronted, challenged, overwhelmed or otherwise excluded. Under proclaim, we are concerned with formulations which can be interpreted as heading off.C. GraduationGraduation can be divided into two parts: focus and force. Focus means that in some sentences, the scaling, and hence the lowering and raising of intensity, is realized through the semantics of category membership. Force relates to the variable scaling of intensity and amount and can be divided into two categories, quantification and intensification.VIIIIII. Data CollectionYour Weekly Address is delivered by the US President each week over current events. End the Government Shutdown, delivered by President Barack Obama on October 5, 2013, is analyzed in detail in the thesis on the basis of Appraisal Theory. Downloaded from , this address has 985 words and is chosen out of two reasons:Firstly, the remark of President Obama was made with the background that the government was partially shut down due to the disagreement between Republicans and Democrats in the House of Representatives over the health care law and debt ceiling. The opportunity to voice himself to the American people helped President Obama make his policy clear and shift the responsibility to Republicans. Therefore, it is worthy our attention to the speech which reveals the signs of the complex situation as well as the addresser’s attitude from the perspective of PDA.Secondly, randomness should be taken into account when it comes to discourse analysis. It is presumed that the “bad” news or speeches are the typical sources for CDA which exposes the darkness in the unbalanced world. Compared with CDA, however, PDA which aims to an united and harmonious community, advocates the analysis of “good news” with a friendly and positive attitude. In other words, it is recommended that both CDA and PDA should be more appliable to discourse analysis regardless of “bad” or “good” news. But in a broader sense what should also be noticed is that CDA is frequently used for typical news or speeches. Repetitive analysis could make less contribution to the development of CDA or PDA. Therefore, applicability requires appropriate randomness, which means less focus on representative news or speeches.
IXIV. PDA of Radio AddressA. Attitude System PerspectiveAttitude is discourse with respect to emotion, particularly in public speech. As the core subcategory in Appraisal Theory, “attitude mainly refers to those values by which speakers attach assessment to participants and processes by reference either to emotional responses or to systems of culturally-determined value systems” (White, “Appraisal: An Overview,” par. 12). It is constituted of three dimensions, namely affect, judgment and appreciation. Affect focuses on emotions indicating how writers or speakers are emotionally disposed to a person, thing, happening or state of affairs. Judgment deals with attitudes toward behavior, which we admire or criticize, praise or condemn. Appreciation concerns the evaluation of things, events or natural phenomenon. This chapter analyzes the data resources from these three aspects.The proportion and number of affect, judgment and appreciation system in the address appear in the following table.As can be seen in the above figure, among the three subsystems of attitude, appreciation is employed the most frequently coming to 20, followed by affect amounting to 8, and judgment accounting for 12.The different frequency of three subsystem in attitude system indicates the
Xcharacteristics of radio address as well as of the addresser. Since weekly radio address serves as an important communication opportunity with ordinary American people, the addresser or the president focuses on his attitude towards events and the policy in the recent week. Therefore, in order to demonstrate his demands and win people’s support, the addresser cares more about people’s response, social development and performance. Thus it is preferred to employ evaluation, the description or appreciation of the event and then the condemnation of the illogicality and injustice of the opposed group.1. Affective meaningAffect is concerned with registering positive and negative feelings: do we feel happy or sad, confident or anxious, interested or bored ? (Martin and White, 36) By Affect, the writer or speaker indicates how they are emotionally disposed to the person, thing, happening or state of affairs. Emotion is at the heart of attitudinal resources because it is the expressive resource we are born with and is embodied physiologically from almost the moment of birth(Martin and White, 52-53). It also means the positive meaning that is good vibes which are enjoyable to experience and negative ones that is bad vibes which are better avoided. For example:We are ecstatic. (positive)I cannot explain the pain and bitterness in me. (negative)In the radio address, it is inevitable for addresser to express positive or negative emotion toward human, behavior and event. The following figure illustrates the frequency of positive and negative affect resources appearing in the address.Obviously, the frequency of negative affect is more than its positive one. It shows that the negative affect resources is mainly used for the public and the opponent while all positive affect resources for the addresser himself. The examples are following:1. And these are just a few of the many heartbreaking letters I’ve gotten from them in the past couple weeks.XI2. They’re veterans worried the services they’ve earned won’t be there. They’re business owners who’ve seen their contracts with the government put on hold, worried they’ll have to let people go.In example 1, and 2, heartbreaking and worried are used as expression of negative affect. Both of them fully show that the partial government shutdown has brought a serious result to the Americans whose interests are damaged just because of political conflicts. On the one hand, the sympathy of the general public is aroused by the description of the feeling when people face adverse condition. On the other hand, it is implied that to end the government shutdown is so desperately needed that the whole nation cannot lose it any more.The affect resource is revealed by another important way to express the negation. The following example can well demonstrate its negative affect:1. Earlier this week, the Republican House of Representatives chose to shut down a government they don’t like over a health care law they don’t like.In the beginning of the address the speaker points out that the government shutdown is caused by the Republican House of Representatives just because they don’t like. The listeners tend to hold that all the consequences brought by the shutdown are attributed to the Republicans who chose to shut down the government. In example 1, don’t like states that the Republicans are careless and reckless over these public issues while the Democrats stand for the public interests. In addition, it is implied that the Republican House of Representatives rather than the ruling government should be to blame for the shutdown.In the above figure, the positive affect occupies 25% in total. The positive affect appearing in the address indicates that the addresser and the American government have enough courage to end the shutdown as soon as they can and believe in government’s capacity. Thus the addresser is able to calm down the people to ensure the social stability. The examples are following:1. I want them to know, I read the stories you share with me.XII2. These Americans and millions of others are counting on Congress to do the right thing. And I will do everything I can to make sure they do.In example 1, share indicates that the distance between the public and the addresser is narrowed and they are in the same community. In example 2, make sure implies the determination of the president about the solution as well as the confidence in the government, so it conveys the positive meaning to American people.2. Judgmental meaningJudgment serves to evaluate human behaviour positively and negatively by reference to a set of institutionalized norms. Judgment is concerned with resources for assessing behaviors, which we admire or criticize, praise or condemn according to various normative principles.In general terms judgments can be divided into those dealing with &social esteem& and those oriented to “social sanction”. Judgments of esteem have to do with &normality&(how unusual someone is), &capacity&(how capable they are) and &tenacity& (how resolute they are); judgments of sanction have to do with &veracity& (how truthful someone is); and &propriety& (how ethical someone is). (Martin and white, 99) The judgments are personalized and subjective. The following figure illustrates the frequency of positive and negative judgments appearing in the address.In the above table, it shows that the positive judgment meaning occurs more frequently than negative judgment meaning. Most of the positive judgments are applied to judge the people and the government in terms of capacity and propriety. Further analysis indicates that those positive judgment resources are distributed in the comments on the public, the opponents and the government itself. For example:1. “......We have worked really hard to get our credit to be acceptable to purchase a home......”2. These are just two of the many letters I’ve received from
XIIIt try to do right by their families.The two examples are the positive judgment on the people who are the mirror of the American spirit. Through these description, the distance between the president and the audience is closed, and then the president has more opportunities to strengthen American people’s confidence and keep their good relationship. Except the positive judgment analysis, however, there are also some negative ones which illustrate the urgency to end the shutdown from another perspective. For example:1. “if it were’t for the direct lending program provided by the USDA, we would not qualify to buy the home we found.”2. They’re business owners who’ve seen their contracts with the government put on hold, worried they’ll have to let people go.In the above examples, the common people cannot make a good performance owing to the service suspension caused by the partial government shutdown. They have no choice but to suffer from the financial loses. Thus the addresser can identify himself with the public as well as reveal his dissatisfaction with the current situation which should be improved immediately. In other words, to end the shutdown is the only way out of the trouble.Besides, He also uses positive judgment to make clear his demands and justify the policy that will be made by the government. For example:1. I’ll always work with anyone of either party on ways to grow this economy, create new jobs, and get our fiscal house in order for the long haul.2. And I certainly won’t pay a ransom in exchange for raising the debt ceiling.While reinforcing his determination, the speaker enables the audience to trust in his capability through positive judgments so as to raise public’s confidence in the government.3. Appreciative meaningCompared with the above subsystems of Attitude, Appreciation is concerned with evaluation of things, events or natural phenomenon. In general terms appreciations can
XIVbe divided into our reactions to things(do they do they please us?), their composition(balance and complexity), and their value (how innovative, authentic, timely, etc.) (Martin and White, 56) In the radio addresses, it is significant for the speaker to share social evaluation of performances and physical objects. The following figure shows the positive and negative appreciation in the address.From the figure it shows that the appreciation negative values occur more frequently than positive ones. The negative appreciation resources mainly refer to the current situation and problems brought by the shutdown. By doing this, the president gives people a clear illustration about the present situation and problems. Thus the audience will give the good comment of the president. So they are easily to stand with him and his demand can be easily understood. For example:1. And I’ve talked a lot about the real-world consequences of this shutdown in recent days, th
the public servants kicked off the job without pay.2. “if funding does not go through, our chances of the American Dream [are] down the drain.”3. As I made clear to them this week, there’s only one way out of this reckless and damaging shutdown: pass a budget that funds our government, with no partisan strings attached.4. For as reckless as a government shutdown is, an economic shutdown that comes with default would be dramatically worse.All the samples are the description of the consequences of the partial government shutdown. The addresser makes it very clear to the audience that the shutdown has resulted in the serious problems and should be ended as soon as possible. In also indicates the addresser’s attitude towards what has happened and what should be done next. However, there is also positive appreciation applied to the Republicans. The
XVdemonstration can be found in the following examples:1. And there are enough Republican and Democratic votes in the House of Representatives willing to do the same, and end this shutdown immediately.2. These Americans and millions of others are counting on Congress to do the right thing.Obviously, the positive evaluation helps to alleviate the tension between two parties and then gain more support from the opponents in pursuit of the common target. Besides, the responsibility for the solution to the problem is partially shifted to the Republicans who have to take action in face of the government shutdown.B. Engagement System PerspectiveEngagement is “concerned with the ways in which resources such as projection, modality, polarity, concession and various comment adverbials position one opinion in relation to another by quoting or reporting, acknowledging a possibility, denying, countering, affirming and so on” (Martin and White, 36). As has been introduced in detail in chapter two, the engagement system can be divided into two constituents, namely monogloss and heterogloss which is the focus of the following analysis. In the chapter, the address will be further demonstrated in accordance to the dialogic contraction and expansion which are the two categories of the heterogloss. The following table shows the distribution of engagement resources in the address.1. Dialogic contractionDialogic contraction is used to act to challenge, fend off or restrict the scope of dialogically alternative positions and voices (滕17). Simply dialogue contraction means
XVIthat they close down the space for dialogic alternatives. Disclaim and proclaim are the two constituents of the dialogic contraction. No proclaim resources is used in the address, so there is no detailed illustration of it.Disclaim means by which some dialogic alternative is directly rejected or supplanted, or is represented as not applying. We are concerned with resources by which some prior utterance or some alternative position is invoked so as to be rejected, replaced or dismissed as irrelevant or some way communicatively inactive (滕17). Disclaim includes Deny and Counter-Expect. The resources of deny are conveyed by some negative adverbs and pronouns such as no, not, never, neither, and nothing. Obviously, the frequency of deny is more than that of counter. Much more denial resources are used to reflect the addresser’s attitude towards the government shutdown and his plan to solve it. For example:1. The American people don’t get to demand ransom in exchange for doing their job. Neither does Congress. They don’t get to hold our democracy or our economy hostage over a settled law. They don’t get to kick a child out of Head Start if I don’t agree to take her parents’ health insurance away. That’s not how our democracy is supposed to work.2.That’s why I won’t pay a ransom in exchange for reopening the government. And I certainly won’t pay a ransom in exchange for raising the debt ceiling.The first example expresses people’s dissatisfaction with the shutdown as well as their answer to the question. Actually, it is the addresser’s answer that is implied in the speech. The president won’t choose the compromise with conditions unless there is no partisan strings attached. Thus the president’s standpoint can be well demonstrated in the example 2 of the following paragraph. In other words, the president will choose to end the government shutdown without any conditions.Counter-Expect or Counter includes formulations which represent the current proposition as replacing or supplanting and thereby countering a proposition which would have been expected in its place (滕35). The countering is usually expressed by conjunctions and connectives such as as, although, however, yet and but. Here are
XVIIexamples of counter:1. Th
the public servants kicked off the job without pay. But today, I want to let the Americans dealing with those real-world consequences have their say.2. And there are enough Republican and Democratic votes in the House of Representatives willing to do the same, and end this shutdown immediately. But the far right of the Republican Party won’t let Speaker John Boehner give that bill a yes-or-no vote.3. I’ll always work with anyone of either party on ways to grow this economy, create new jobs, and get our fiscal house in order for the long haul. But not under the shadow of these threats to our economy.In the example 1 the addresser shifts the listener’s attention from the consequences caused by the shutdown to the ordinary people’s voices. The example 2 shows that there is a good chance to end the shutdown immediately with the cooperation between two parties. But it seems that the Republicans are not willing to do it and reject the solution. By using counter, the addresser implies that the Republicans should be to blame for the result. The example 4 reflects the addresser’s demands on ending the shutdown for the benefit of the economy. On the one hand, the president shows his determination to make every efforts to build a stronger economy. On the other hand, an economic shutdown can only be avoided with an end to the government shutdown. In this way the addresser makes his policy very clear and convincing so that the audience’s trust can be built.2. Dialogic expansionDialogic expansion means that the utterance actively makes allowance for dialogically alternative positions and voices (滕17). It is divided into two categories, namely Attribute and Entertain.Attribute deals with the engagement resources which disassociate the proposition from the text’s internal authorial voice by attributing it to some external source (Martin and White, 111). Attribute is most typically achieved through the grammar of directly and
XVIIIindirectly reported speech and thought (Martin and White, 111). It is often realized by some verbs such as say, report, state, declare, announce, claim, believe and think. In this speech the quote is used more frequently than the report. For example:1. “Our Head Start agency......was forced to stop providing services on October 1st for over 770 children, and 175 staff were furloughed. I am extremely concerned for the welfare of these children. There are parents who work and who attend school. Where are they leaving their children......is it a safe environment......are [they] getting the food that they receive at their Head Start program?”2. “We put in an offer to purchase a home this weekend, and it was accepted......if funding does not go through, our chances of the American Dream [are] down the drain......We have worked really hard to get our credit to be acceptable to purchase a home......if it weren’t for the direct lending program provided by the USDA, we would not qualify to buy the home we found.”Those two quotes are from people’s letters to the addresser who makes his speech more persuasive by using them. The audience can be impressed that the government shutdown has actually brought serious consequences to the country and should be ended immediately to avoid worsening. Thus both the two examples which are more acceptable support the authorial voice. Meanwhile the speaker will not be responsible for the reliability of these external voices.Entertain is to explicitly present the proposition as an internal voice, making the authorial voice as one of the possible positions. Hence, it is to make space for alternative voices (李40). As has been discussed in the chapter two, entertain includes three categories: modality, evidentiality and pseudo question or rhetorical question. Although entertain is very important in oral and written speech, the three entertain resources are rarely used in this address where affirmative and imperative moods are used more often due to the topic of the address this week. There is only two example of them:1. These Americans and millions of others are counting on Congress to do the right thing. And I will do everything I can to make sure they do.XIX2. I will always work with anyone of either party on ways to grow this economy, create new jobs, and get our fiscal house in order for the long haul.Will is mainly used as a modal verb for predication about what will happen in the future. But will in the example is connected to the speaker’s promise and determination. The word implies that the president will make every attempt to end the government shutdown, which helps alleviate the public’s concerns and raise their confidence.C. Graduation System PerspectiveGraduation is the center to the appraisal system. It is concerned with values which act to provide grading or scaling. Both attitude and judgment resources can be applied to by the graduation system. According to the attitudes these semantic resources amplify, graduation resources are divided into “FORCE”(variable scaling of intensity) and “FOCUS”(sharpening or blurring of category boundaries) (滕19). The following table shows the distribution of force and focus in the address.1. ForceForce relates to the variable scaling of intensity and amount and can be divided into two categories, quantification and intensification. Intensification refers to the scaling of qualities and process while quantification the scaling of entities. The following are examples of intensification:1. I will always work with anyone of either party on ways to grow this economy, create new jobs, and get our fiscal house in order for the long haul.2. And I certainly won’t pay a ransom in exchange for raising the debt ceiling.
XX3. For as reckless as a government shutdown is, an economic shutdown that comes with default would be dramatically worse.4. But the far right of the Republican Party won’t let Speaker John Boehner give that bill a yes-or-no vote.The first two examples shows the addresser’s measures over the issue. In the example 1, always reveals that the president are resolved to work together with both parties for the benefit of the nation, which shapes a good image in people’s mind. The second example reflects the firm determination not to end the shutdown with any conditions attached. In the example 3 dramatically worse indicates that the potential influences could be made to the whole country. Far emphasizes that a group of Republicans are hindering the end of the government shutdown.Another important category is quantification which is frequently used in the address. For example:1. And these are just a few of the many heartbreaking letters I’ve gotten from them in the past couple weeks, including more than 30,000 over the past few days.2. These are just two of the many letters I’ve received from people who work hard.3. As I made clear to them this week, there’s only one way out of this reckless and damaging shutdown: pass a budget that funds our government, with no partisan strings attached.4. And I will do everything I can to make sure they do.Both concrete and abstract numbers are employed a lot in the speech. In the example 1 and 2 the numbers indicate that the government shutdown has prompted the people’s strong discontent. In the third example one shows the president’s view that there is no choice but to end the shutdown with no partisan strings attached. In the fourth example the president reinforces people’s trust in the government with his determination.2. FocusAs another category of the graduation system, focus is applied most typically to
XXIcategories which are not scalable. Under focus, it is possible to up-scale, or “sharpen”, the specification so that prototypicality is indicated or to down-scale, or “soften”, the specification so as to characterize an instance as having only marginal membership in the category (滕 19). The effect of sharpening is often realized by adverbials and adjectives such as only, clear, real, clearly, just, such while the effect of softening realized by words or phrases like unclear, some, kind of, indirect. Here are examples:1. And I know that Republicans in the House of Representatives are hearing the same kinds of stories, too.2. As I made clear to them this week, there’s only one way out of this reckless and damaging shutdown: pass a budget that funds our government, with no partisan strings attached.The first example involves softening while the second sharpening. In the example 1 kinds of indicates that both parties could have heard about people’s similar complaints. Clear shows the president’s firm standpoint over the issue and only emphasizes the urgency to end the shutdown without any other available solutions.D. SummaryIn this chapter Appraisal Theory is applied to a piece of Your Weekly Address delivered by President Obama in terms of three subsystems, namely attitude, engagement and graduation. From the perspective of attitude, the addresser who uses a number of words of affection and appreciation focuses on the grave consequences brought by the government shutdown. It is well illustrated that people’s interests have been badly damaged, which fully convinces the audience to call for a stop to shutdown. From the perspective of engagement, the president expresses his deep concern about people’s livelihood by quoting the letters from the public. Also, his firm determination to end the shutdown immediately is fully demonstrated by using disclaim resources. Through dialogic contraction and expansion he makes his policy very clear to the American people. From the perspective of graduation, the speaker puts an emphasis with
XXIIintensification and quantification resources on his answer to the question as well as the negative effects of the shutdown on the public.ConclusionAs a growing theory of analysis, the positive discourse analysis (PDA) has attracted increasing attention in the field of linguistics around the world. Based on the critical discourse analysis (CDA), the development of PDA is actually complementary to each other. Thus it is very beneficial to the further study on the discourse analysis through the new perspective.Appraisal Theory is applied in the thesis to analyzing the address delivered by President Obama on October 5th from three subsystems, namely attitude, engagement and graduation. There are some findings:1. The address is delivered with four aspects, the public, the opponent, the event and himself. Three types of resources are distributed differently to them in accordance with the addresser’s emotions and intentions. In terms of himself, the president uses a number of positive judgmental words to show his efforts to grow the economy and ability to end the shutdown. In terms of the public, two quotations are employed to describe how the people’s life is affected because of the shutdown.2. The event and the addresser himself are the two focuses of the speech. The majority of appreciation resources within attitude are distributed to the illustration of the government shutdown resulting in serious impacts on the whole country. The attribute resources are mainly used through two quotations to impress the listeners that people’s interests have been severely damaged. Besides, the quantification resources are employed to illustrate the violence of the shutdown. With respect to the addresser himself, a number
XXIIIof positive judgmental words help the president build a strong and capable image as he makes promises to the audience. In addition, the addresser uses a lot of disclaim resources to make his voice very clear that he will try his best to end the shutdown without conditions.3. The opponent has been less distributed with resources. Actually, the positive appreciative words are used more than negative ones in this speech in order to win the support from the opposite group and avoid a worsening situation. Also, no external source comes from the Republicans, meaning that the Democratic president makes an attempt to avoid direct criticism on them despite some negative words of affection.4. In this address, the main resources are appreciative ones belonging to the attitude and the frequency of negative words is more than that of positive ones. In other words, the addresser tends to share social evaluation of performances and the aesthetic feature of physical objects, which reveals the addresser’s attitude and standpoint. Heavy use of negative resources indicates that the speaker is very concerned and dissatisfied with the government shutdown and the Republicans who should be to blame for that result.5. A new perspective of discourse analysis is offered by PDA which leads to a more productive conclusion and contributes to the peace linguistics. Compared with CDA which focuses on the relationship between the ideology and power in the discourse, PDA amis to build a harmonious, conciliative and tolerant world with a friendly attitude towards the discourse. It is recommended that PDA should be applied to discourse analysis since a solution to the problem is pursued for the harmonious society in today’s world.However, there are some apparent limitations in the thesis:1. Many more various addresses are required in the corpus in order to lay a foundation of quantity-oriented analysis based on PDA.2. PDA, composed of attitude, engagement and appreciation, puts an emphasis on the lexical-level analysis while larger constituents above words cannot be fully studied. Thus the theory needs further development taking into consideration the textual function
XXIVabove the sentence. Besides, there is a lack of clear classification between three categories within attitude resources. The researcher could have difficulty in distinguish them apart in some cases. The problem also exists in engagement and graduation resources in which a clear categorization is needed.3. In further study the multimodal analysis could be employed with the consideration of the image, voice, video, body language and so on. Discourse analysis beyond text could be a tendency in future when linguistics is integrated with other subjects such as psychology, sociology and politics or intra-linguistics such as phonetics, morphology and syntax with the help of science and technology.XXVWork Cited .: Palgrave. 36, 2005.滕达．奥巴马电台演讲的积极话语分析――评价理论视角．东北农业大学．硕士论文．2011 李竹．对英语报纸社论的积极话语分析．苏州大学．硕士论文．2013XXVIAcknowledgmentWriting the essay enlarges a lot our knowledge of linguistics. At this moment we would like to extend our sincere gratitude to our handsome and hilarious teacher Mr. Nie for his weekly direction about our essay and constructive suggestion. In addition, we are thankful for other classmates’ support. Also, we want to express our appreciation for all the people offering their help to us as well as China National Knowledge for its abundant resources.XXVII
积极话语分析相关文章
《》由(在点网)整理提供，版权归原作者、原出处所有。
Copyright &
All Rights Reserved.