评价理论视角下中国外交部发言人中美贸易战话语分析开题报告

1. 研究目的与意义（文献综述包含参考文献）

1.introduction1.1 research backgroundnowadays, world multi-polarization and economic globalization are making headway amid twists and turns, which makes the competition of synthetic national power become muchfiercer. there is no disclaim that national trade competitions cannot avoid conflicts and frictions, especially between two economic magnates: china and united states, which even has turned into a trade war. american government keeps taking harsher trade actions with the hostile purpose of exerting pressures on the economic development of china. in order to guard chinas legitimate economic rights and benefits, not only should ministry of commerce formulate effective fiscal and economic strategies but also foreign ministry ought to take appropriate measures via diplomacy to uphold the very justice and defend the intrinsic rights and interests of our country in terms of economy. besides, language as well as discourses especially the discourse of foreign ministry spokesmen which are vital resources have become more closely concerned with national economic development and safety. therefore, there is an inevitable necessity to have an integrated analysis to investigate positive effects ofdiplomatic discourses of spokesmen of the ministry of foreign affairs on china-u.s. trade war.quite a few of heeds have been paid to the discussion and studies of appraisal theory since the very beginning of the twentieth century. five aspects which are appraisal, ideation, conjunction, identification and periodicity can be together used to analyze discourses(martin rose, 2003). in the recent years, the discussion and studies related to appraisal theory have become more prevalent and much attention have been attached to the appraisal theory-based analysis of discourses. the initial application of appraisal theory in the analysis was about the discourses in newspapers but nowadays the boundary of which has already covered almost everything in the world. diplomacy is no exception.a mass of analyses of discourses related to diplomacy and from many spokesmen of foreign ministry in different countries and nations have been carried out. these analyses are conducive to helping us to capture the evident and implied emotions, meanings, judgments and appreciations in diplomatic discourses more precisely and efficiently. and up to the higher level, this also assists researchers to find out the relevancy between discourses utilized by spokesmen of foreign ministry and one or more particular events. among these previous appraisal theory-based analyses comprised the relationship between attitude of discourses and the construction of national identity, sovereignty, rights, interests and so on. given the originality and prominence, this present study is intended to make an integrated analysis of diplomatic discourses from chinese foreign ministry spokesmen on china-u.s. trade war which is based on appraisal theory from the perspective of appraisal theory. appraisal theory contributes comprehensively to the exploration of the relevancy between diplomatic discourses of chinese foreign ministry spokesmen and the maintenance of legitimate interests and rights of economy. 1.2 need of the studyalthough there have already been many related studies on china-u.s. trade war, there are few studies on chin-u.s. trade disputes from the perspective of appraisal theory up to now. the application of appraisal theory in various discourse analyses shows that it is a theoretical framework of systematic functional linguistics with full of tension. obviously, appraisal theory can reveal the very meanings and functions of discourse more systematically and profoundly compared to other theories, which helps researchers obtain a better comprehension of standpoints, opinions and of course attitude within discourse to an extent. therefore, the present thesis which applies appraisal theory as its theoretical framework bears benefits both practically and academically. on the one hand, if the utilization of diplomatic discourses has a positive impact on the convey of reasonable justice, it will be helpful to support the defense of chinas economic rights and interests, which has practical significance for the economy and economic sovereignty of our country. hence, it is necessary to demonstrate how the usage of diplomatic discourses is related to the protection. on the other hand, the analysis of relationship between diplomatic discourses from chinese foreign ministry spokesmen and the just defense of legitimate economic rights and interests of our country will in turn strengthen peoples capacity of critical thinking of worldwide affairs and affiliated consequences. last but not least, recognizing how these fine-picked diplomatic discourses perform functions precisely will be of benefit to enlarge the scope of appraisal theorys application. these analyses can provide more accurate appreciation of specific utterances which is of great importance for further research. 1.3 research purposesfrom the perspective of appraisal theory, the present study is targeted to investigate how the diplomatic discourses used by chinese foreign ministry spokesmen are effective to defend chinas legitimate rights and interests of economy. namely, to find out the relevancy and relationship between the both is a key point of this research. additionally, this study is devoted to obtain a better comprehension of diplomatic discourses of chinese foreign ministry spokesmen and their relationships to rightful defense of national rights and interests, which is quite of importance and meaning to inspire and guide the appropriate application in other events and fields. in other words, if the defense of economic rights and interests of china can be facilitated by the rightful choices of diplomatic discourses, the essence and principle behind it may contain guidance and enlightening significance.2.literature review2.1definitions of key conceptsthe obligation of foreign ministry spokesmen is to release diplomatic information or elaborate the official views and positions of the foreign ministry on international events or current situation issues at a regular press conference of the foreign ministry, and reply to the questions of domestic and foreign journalists within a reasonable and appropriate range. as spokesmen of the government's core departments, our foreign ministry spokesmen represent china's official attitude in the process of political information transmission. the discourse of foreign ministry spokesmen is the official speech authorized by the foreign ministry on behalf of the foreign ministry at the regular press conferences of the ministry of foreign affairs.china-u.s. trade war which is also referred to as trade disputes or frictions between china and the u.s. is an issue of prime importance in china-u.s. economic relations. trade disputes mainly occur in two aspects: one is china's comparative advantage in the field of export; the other is china's lack of advantage in the field of import and technical knowledge. the former is basically competitive, while the latter is not fully functional. their impacts on the economic welfare and long-term development of the two countries are different.2.2 theoretical frameworkas a matter of fact, there are quite a few varieties of angles to define appraisal theory. in accordance to the very initial definition, appraisal theory is appraisal-related which is diverse attitudes in negotiated discourses, the intensity of involved emotions and a variety of methods to demonstrate values and be connected to readers(martin, 2003). and then li (2004) identifies appraisal theory from a macroscopic view, as a lately developed lexico-grammatical framework for studying interpersonal meaning in functional meaning, which is concerned with the varieties of attitudes negotiable in a text. all in all, the appraisal system is an emerging development anchored in systematic functional linguistics (sfl), which is a interpretive research(wang, 2001).2.3 related empirical studieswith the appraisal theory as the framework, sun chen (2014) qualitatively analyzed the characteristics and reasons of the attitude in the discourse of the spokesmen of the ministry of foreign affairs on the philippines in the south china sea dispute from january of 2012 to july of 2013 and concluded that the attitude of spokesmen comprises judgment, appreciation and affect which contributes to the maintenance of national sovereignty. hsu huang (2017) utilized appraisal theory under the framework of systemic functional linguistics (sfl), carrying out the positive discourse analysis on fu ying's diplomatic discourse. subsequently, they described the linguistic characteristics of fu ying's discourse and further explored how fu ying uses language resources to actively introduce china to the world and build a comprehensive image of china.its well known that china and united states as the biggest developing country and the most developed country in the world both have profound influences on nearly all fields, especially in the domain of bilateral trade. doubtless, in the course of the amplification of its economic scale and rapid developments, it is really hard to dodge the constant friction which is commonly referred to the trade war metaphorically. there do exist quite a few of reasons may be able to account for the trade war. for instance, the issue in correspondence with the exchange rate of rmb, the suppression to china caused by the american dominance of trade rules, chinas high dependence on the trade with u.s. as well as relatively single trade commodities of china and the absence of american recognition to the chinas status in market economy(zhang, 2018). in addition, china-u.s. trade imbalance has led to the amplification of trade deficits of china and chinas rise is considered as a potential threat to the own interests of the u.s. which in turn to drive united states to take unjust and extreme measures to fight against china in quite hostile way(wang, 2019).martin (2004) published a milestone-like thesis which firstly introduced positive discourse analysis (pda). he believed that the inclusion of positive discourse analysis is inevitable to the fulfillment of the pursuit of discourse analysis which is promoting the change of the society. hsu (2012) made a comparison between critical discourse analysis and positive discourse analysis under the framework of systematic functional linguistic (sfl) and subsequently came to a conclusion that positive discourse analysis is a supplement to the critical one, in which case, appraisal theory is enabled to collaborate with discourse analysis comprehensively.referencesbrown, g., 以中菲南海争端中国外交部发言人话语为例，《浙江外国语学院学报》，（3）：1-8。

宋海娟、周红红（2017），评价理论视域下国家身份建构的态度资源分析以亚投行和世界银行官方发言为例，《社会科学前沿》，（6）：784-792。

王振华（2001），评价系统及其运作系统功能语言学的新发展，《外国语》，（6）。

2. 研究的基本内容、问题解决措施及方案

The present thesis makes the analysis on the characteristics and specific reasons of attitudes of Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesmen in the diplomatic responses they have made to domestic and foreign journalists questions on China-U.S. trade war and factors of the context related to which. And then make a through inquiry into how diplomatic discourses from Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesmen perform functions to some extent when it comes to defending Chinas legitimate economic rights and interests in the China-U.S. trade war. Under the framework of Appraisal Theory, the following research questions will be examined: (1) What affect did spokesmen of the Chinese Foreign Ministry express when answering the questions about the China-U.S. Trade War? (2) What judgment did spokesmen of the Chinese Foreign Ministry express when answering the questions about the China-U.S. Trade War? (3) What appreciation did spokesmen of the Chinese Foreign Ministry express when answering the questions about the China-U.S. Trade War? In order to analyze how Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesmen utilize appropriate diplomatic discourses to defend economic rights and interests of our country, the present research collects the responses of spokesmen of Chinese Foreign Ministry to questions about China-U.S. Trade War raised by journalists in regular press conferences of Chinese Foreign Ministry from March 2018 to October 2019 on its official website (https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/). Every single of QA is counted as one piece. The collected corpus comprises around sixty written records of responses that concerned with issues about China-U.S. trade war. Based on the fine-collected corpus, this current research targets to have a better comprehension of these diplomatic discourses and the role played by them in the defense of national economic rights and interests in the terms of bilateral trade frictions. For the sake of exploring attitudes, expressions and the maintenance of economic rights and interests of diplomatic discourses of spokesmen of our country, Qualitative Analysis Method (QAM) is adopted in this present research under the framework of appraisal theory, the very superiority of which mainly lies in its holism which can both inspects the language used by the research subjects and takes the influence of the societal literacy environment in consideration(Sun, 2014). First and foremost, every single one of the collected corpus will be marked with three categories of attitudes which are affect, judgment and appreciation in accordance with the classification scheme of appraisal system. Subsequently, based on thehistorical background of issues connected to China-U.S. trade war and related questions raised by domestic and foreign journalists, the present study will analysis in details the features and reasons for the utilization of diplomatic discourses of Chinese Foreign Ministrys spokesmen. Whats more, this preset research aims to make a delicate inquiry into the relevancy between diplomatic discourses of Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesmen and the defense of economic rights and interests. Last but not least, the goal of the present research is to better comprehend the vital role diplomatic discourses play in the maintenance of national rights and interests in terms of economy in the broader ken.