MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING QUY NHON UNIVERSITY HUỲNH HỮU ĐỨC AN ANALYSIS OF ATTITUDINAL RESOURCES IN NEWS REPORTS ABOUT US- CHINA TRADE WAR Field: English Linguistics Code: 8. Bùi Thị Đào BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC QUY NHƠN HUỲNH HỮU ĐỨC PHÂN TÍCH NGỮ LIỆU “THÁI ĐỘ” SỬ DỤNG TRONG CÁC TIN TỨC CNN VÀ CHINA-BRIEFING VỀ CUỘC CHIẾN TRANH THƯƠNG MẠI GIỮA MỸ VÀ TRUNG QUỐC Chuyên ngành: Ngôn Ngữ Anh Mã số: 8.01 Người hướng dẫn: TS. Bùi Thị Đào ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to the following people for their great support to my thesis. First and foremost, I owe heartfelt appreciation to my supervisor, Dr.
Bui Thi Dao, for her patient guidance, valuable critique and enthusiastic encouragement during the planning and development of this work. Without her persistent help, the thesis would not have materialized. Besides, I am deeply grateful to Dr. Vo Duy Duc for his great lectures that have been contributed to my research typically.
In particular, I would like to express my gratitude to Assoc. Nguyen Thi Thu Hien for her insightful comments. Also, I owe a great debt of gratitude to the lecturers who provided me with knowledge and foundation for the work. Last but not least, my special thanks go to my beloved family and friends who give me generous support so that I could accomplish my research.
STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I hereby certify that the thesis contains no material which has been submitted for any other degree or diploma in any university or other tertiary institution and, to the best of my knowledge, contains no material previously published or written by another person, except where due reference has been made in the text. Quy Nhon, 2021 Huỳnh Hữu Đức ABSTRACT The study presents an investigation into attitudinal resources in news reports about US-China trade war from the two reliable websites CNN and China-Briefing. The data for the analysis consists of 30 samples of US-China trade war news reports (15 in each website). Appraisal theory of Martin and White (2005) is used as a framework for the data analysis with the aims at examining the use of attitude in CNN and China-Briefing news reports about US-China trade war and drawing a distinction between them in terms of attitude values.
This research employs a number of methods such as comparatives, contrastives and descriptives in the combination with quantitative, qualitative approaches. The findings of the study reveal that all the three sub-types of attitude occur frequently in the texts despite their different distribution in each website. Based on the results, we make a distinction between the ways the American speakers utilize attitudinal resources and the Chinese counterparts. To some extents, implications on teaching and learning English are put forward in the hope of providing useful and comprehensive knowledge.
TABLES OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP ABSTRACT LIST OF TABLES LIST OF FIGURES ABBREVIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION .Rationale of the study .Significance of the study.Aims and objectives .Scope of the study .Organization of the study .4 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW. Overview of appraisal. Attitude and their sub-types. News reports in CNN and China-Briefing about US-China trade war 22 2.
Validity and Reliability .33 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS. Types of attitudinal resources and their frequencies in news reports about trade war between US and China. Similarities and differences between CNN and China-Briefing news reports about US-China trade war in terms of attitudinal resources. Sub-categories of affect in CNRs and CBNRs.
Judgment in CNRs and CBNRs. Sub-categorizes of appreciation in CNRs and CBNRs .59 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS. Limitations and suggestions for further study .67 LIST OF TABLES Table Page Title number number 2.1 Judgment – social esteem 15 2.2 Judgment – social sanction 16 2.3 Types of appreciation 21 Types of attitude and their frequencies in CNRs and 4.2 Types of judgment in CNRs and CBNRs 43 4.3 Composition in CNRs and CBNRs 55 4.4 Valuation in CNRs and CBNRs 57 LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page Title number number 2.1 An overview of appraisal resource 7 2.2 Overview of attitude subsystems 8 2.3 The affect system and its lexical instantiations 13 2.4 The judgment system and its lexical instantiations 18 The system of appreciation and its lexical 2.5 19 instantiations Types of attitude and their frequencies in CNRs and 4.2 Sub-categories of affect in CNRs and CBNRs 35 4.3 Sub-categorizes of appreciation in CNRs and CBNRs 52 ABBREVIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS (a) Abbreviations + ‗Positive‘ - ‗Negative‘ CNR News reports about US-China trade war in CNN CBNR News reports about US-China trade war in China- Briefing (b) Conventions CNR (1-15): CNN data numbered from 1 to 15. CBNR (1-15): China-Briefing data numbered from 1 to 15.
Rationale of the study These days, news report has been developing with tremendous speed due to the great need for collecting information. Reading news reports daily is widely believed not only to help people be aware of the constant changes in the surrounding but also be one of the best ways to learn languages. News reports are delivered through a variety of media. Each type offers different approaches to the world.
Printed newspapers provide information through scripts; broadcasting publishes news by means of audios and videos; online newspapers do the job via all the means of scripts, sounds and images. It is the multi-dimensional way of giving information that makes news become more and more powerful in our society. The concept of news report deals with many topics consisting of politics, education, business and so forth. Among them, US-China trade war is viewed as one of the most notable topics due to the immense significance.
According to James (2020), a trade war happens when one country retaliates against another by raising import tariffs or placing other restrictions on the other country's imports. Trade wars can commence if one country perceives a competitor nation has unfair trading practices. Domestic trade unions or industry lobbyists can place pressure on politicians to make imported goods less attractive to consumers, pushing international policy toward a trade war. Trade wars are often a result of a misunderstanding of the widespread benefits of free trade and a side effect of protectionism, which are government actions and policies that restrict international trade.
A country will generally undertake protectionist actions with the intent of shielding domestic 2 businesses and jobs from foreign competition. Protectionism is also a method used to balance trade deficits. A trade deficit happens when a country's imports exceed the amounts of its exports. James (2020) further adds that tariff is a tax or duty imposed on the goods imported into a nation.
In a global economy, a trade war can become very damaging to the consumers and businesses of both nations, and the contagion can grow to affect many aspects of both economies. For this reason, news reports about US-China trade war is hotter than ever before. Like other kinds of news reports, apart from providing facts, news report about US-China trade war is also means of writers to convey their own evaluation explicity or implicity, which has certain impacts on the way readers approach the problems. The evaluation could be realized through many aspects.
Of these, attitudinal resources are considered as a remarkable one. Therefore, how are the resources employed in news reports about US-China? Appraisal theory suggested by Martin and White (2005) could be one of the most convincing strategies to answer the question as it offers a systematic tool to analyze a range of types of attitude. Appraisal has received much attention recently. More and more researchers have addressed the issue of appraisal in such various genres as film reviews: Patrick (2005); commentaries: Arrese and Perucha (2006); academic: Allison and Wu (2005), Love (2006), Liu and Thompson (2009); interviews: Caldwell (2009); speeches: Wang (2010); editorial: Van (2014); news reports: Do (2015), Le (2015); marketing discourse: Alamsya et al.
Despite the interest, to the best of my knowledge, there is almost no comparative study on news reports in CNN and Briefing-China about US- China trade war conducted based on the system of attitude. For the above reasons, I would like to conduct a thesis entitled “An analysis of attitudinal resources in news reports about US-China trade war”. Significance of the study The findings of the study are expected to make some theoretical and practical contribution. For theoretical purposes, the findings will point out how attitudinal resources are used in news reports about US-China trade war.
This could reaffirm the importance of appraisal theory. Besides, a comparison between the use of the resources in CNN news reports and China-Briefing ones also is made. Thus, this study can be seen as a document for those who are going to study similar matters and provide them with an important opportunity to advance the understanding of the domain. For practical purposes, it is expected that the findings could help Vietnamsese learners of English especially those who desire to write news effectively, get some useful knowledge and provide implications for further research.
Aims and objectives 1. Aims The overall purpose of the study is to analyze specific kinds of attitude in CNN and China-Briefing news reports about US-China trade war and their frequencies to find the similarities and differences between CNN and China- Briefing news reports about US-China trade war in terms of attitudinal resources. Objectives The above aims will be accomplished by fulfilling the following research objectives: - To investigate types of attitude and their frequencies in news reports about US-China trade war. 4 - To find out the similarities and differences in news reports about US-China trade war in terms of attitude system.
Research Questions This research seeks to address the following questions : 1. What are types of attitudinal resources and their frequencies in news reports about trade war between US and China ? 2. What are the similarities and differences between CNN and China- Briefing news reports about US-China trade war in terms of attitudinal resources ? 1. Scope of the study The study investigates the attitudinal resources including affect, judgment and appreciation and compares how the resources are used in CNN and China-Briefing news reports about US-China trade war.
The data were collected from 30 pieces of news reports selected from the two websites ―CNN‖ and ―China-Briefing‖ with the average length of each piece of news reports being about 300-1000 words selected at random in 2019 to guarantee that the data analysis have been done possibly and manageably. Organization of the study This study will be presented in five chapters as follows : Chapter 1, Introduction, includes the rationale, the significance of the study, the aims and objectives, research questions, the scope, and the 5 organization of the study. Chapter 2, Literature review, first provides an overview of appraisal theory including three subsystems: engagement, graduation and attitude, then continues with an introduction of news reports about US-China trade war. The chapter eventually comes up with a brief presentation of the previous studies related to the issues under analysis.
Chapter 3, Research methods and Methodology, describes the research methods, research procedures, description of population and samples, and the procedure of data collection, and data analysis of the study. Chapter 4, Findings and Discussion, shows the results of the data analysis to identify types of attitudinal resources in CNN and Briefing-China news reports about US-China trade war. Besides, differences and similarities of the news in term of three sub-types between the two corpora are presented. Chapter 5, Conclusion and Implications, provides a summary of the major findings, draws conclusions and pedagogical implications, limitations and puts forward suggestions for further study.
6 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2. Overview of appraisal Appraisal, emerging from a project – ―Write it Right‖ – led by Martin (1990-1995) along with other scholars such as White (1990-1995), Iedema (1990-1995) and Rothery (1990-1995) in Sydney, is an extension of Halliday‘s Systemic Functional Linguistics.