5.1.1 Analysis of Ecological Subjects as Evaluated............................47
5.1.2 Attitude......................................49
Chapter Ⅴ Results and Discussion
5.1 Analysis of Appraisal Resources in Verbal Modality
Stibbe (2015) believes that the analysis of discourse appraisal system is very vital toreveal the author’s potential ecological ideas. In Appraisal system, speakers take stands,and express attitudes and feelings by using appraisal resources. Appraisal resourcescomprises three interacting domains, attitude, engagement and graduation. In this part,therefore, the appraisal meaning of verbal resources is analyzed from three subsystemsunder the appraisal system in verbal modality.
5.1.1 Analysis of Ecological Subjects as Evaluated
In accordance with the research produces mentioned in Chapter 4, in the first step, weneed to annotation the ecological subject before analyzing the verbal modality, and here wealso need to explain what the ecological subject is.
Ecosophy emerges and develops in the context of ecological crisis, which focuses onthe relationship between human being as an ordinary member of the ecosystem and otherorganisms and the whole ecosystem. For this purpose, Yu (1988) pointed out that there is aconcept of “human-based ecology” in ecology. This is the object of human ecologyresearch. It includes the ecology of individuals, families, cities or villages, countries ornations, and global humans as the subject. Li (2019) in order to distinguish from theconcept of “subject” in philosophy, which embodies the initiative of human beings, called the subject from the perspective of ecosophy as the ecological subject, and defined it as theliving and non-living existence that can affect the stability of the ecosystem. The categoryof ecological subject includes human beings, non-human beings and natural beings.
Chapter VIConclusion
6.1 Major Findings of the Research
First of all, Martin’s appraisal theory, which is well known for its emphasis on howlanguage achieves interactive meanings through evaluation and appraisal. The expansion ofMartin’s appraisal theory by Chinese scholars, however, provides a theoretical basis forEDA. At the same time, Kress &Van Leeuwen’s visual grammar and potential meaning ofpitch lay the theoretical foundations for the analysis framework of multimodal EDA.Under this framework, three research problems in multimodal discourse are analyzed inthree stages. On answering the first research question, the appraisal resource distributionand ecological property of verbal, visual and audio modalities are the main focuses. Thefollowing is the research findings:
This study uses appraisal theory to annotate appraisal resources in verbal modality.After annotating and analyzing, it is found that the discourse tends to use positivejudgment resources to express its attitude towards the whole event. The use of engagementand graduation resources increase the credibility and authenticity of the documentary. Forthe Chinese people and Chinese policy, these positive appraisal resources are consistentwith them. The natural subject that is the virus itself is all negative appraisal resources. Forthe audience, the author builds rapport through positive comments about China and othercountries. Not only that, the attitude towards the rest of the world is also positive.Therefore, discourse lies in the harmonious ecological relationship between the audience and the natural ecological subject, so verbal modality belongs to the beneficial appraisalresources.
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