An analysis of attitudinal resources in news reports about us china trade war

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
QUY NHON UNIVERSITY

HUỲNH HỮU ĐỨC

AN ANALYSIS OF ATTITUDINAL
RESOURCES IN NEWS REPORTS ABOUT USCHINA TRADE WAR
Field: English Linguistics
Code: 8.22.02.01

Supervisor: Dr. 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:

8.22.02.01

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. Prof. Dr.
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 ......................................................................1
1.1.Rationale of the study ..............................................................................1

1.2.Significance of the study..........................................................................3
1.3.Aims and objectives .................................................................................3
1.3.1.Aims ................................................................................................3
1.3.2.Objectives .......................................................................................3
1.4.Research Questions ..................................................................................4
1.5.Scope of the study ....................................................................................4
1.6.Organization of the study .........................................................................4
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ...........................................................6
2.1. Overview of appraisal .............................................................................6
2.2. Attitude and their sub-types ...................................................................8
2.2.1. Affect .............................................................................................9
2.2.2. Judgment ......................................................................................14
2.2.3. Appreciation ................................................................................18
2.3. News reports in CNN and China-Briefing about US-China trade war 22
2.4. Previous studies.....................................................................................23
2.5. Summary ...............................................................................................29
CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY ...................................................................30
3.1. Research design.....................................................................................30


3.2. Data collection ......................................................................................30
3.3. Data analysis .........................................................................................31
3.4. Data procedures.....................................................................................31
3.5. Validity and Reliability .........................................................................32
3.6. Summary ...............................................................................................33
CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS ...........................................34
4.1. Types of attitudinal resources and their frequencies in news reports
about trade war between US and China .......................................................34
4.2. Similarities and differences between CNN and China-Briefing news
reports about US-China trade war in terms of attitudinal resources ...........35

4.2.1. Sub-categories of affect in CNRs and CBNRs ............................35
4.2.2. Judgment in CNRs and CBNRs ..................................................43
4.2.3. Sub-categorizes of appreciation in CNRs and CBNRs ...............52
4.3. Summary ...............................................................................................59
CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS ...............................62
5.1. Recapitulation .......................................................................................62
5.2. Pedagogical implications ......................................................................64
5.3. Limitations and suggestions for further study ......................................65
5.4. Summary ...............................................................................................66
REFERENCES.................................................................................................67


LIST OF TABLES

Table

Title

number

Page
number

2.1

Judgment – social esteem

15

2.2

Judgment – social sanction

16

2.3

Types of appreciation

21

4.1

Types of attitude and their frequencies in CNRs and
CBNRs

34

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

Title

number

Page
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

2.5

4.1

The system of appreciation and its lexical
instantiations

19

Types of attitude and their frequencies in CNRs and
CBNRs

4.2

Sub-categories of affect in CNRs and CBNRs

4.3

Sub-categorizes of appreciation in CNRs and CBNRs

34
35
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 ChinaBriefing

(b)

Conventions
CNR (1-15):

CNN data numbered from 1 to 15.

CBNR (1-15):

China-Briefing data numbered from 1 to 15.


1

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1.

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.
(2015). Despite the interest, to the best of my knowledge, there is almost no
comparative study on news reports in CNN and Briefing-China about USChina 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”.


3

1.2.

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.

1.3.

Aims and objectives

1.3.1. 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 ChinaBriefing news reports about US-China trade war in terms of attitudinal
resources.
1.3.2. 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.
1.4.

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 ChinaBriefing news reports about US-China trade war in terms of
attitudinal resources ?

1.5.

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.
1.6.

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

2.1. 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. According to Martin and White
(2005: 34-35), the theory is defined as ―one of three major discourse semantic
resources construing interpersonal meaning (alongside involvement and
negotiation)‖.
As Martin and White (2005: 35) mentioned, to perform the functions,
appraisal uses three sub-systems: attitude, engagement and graduation.
The first sub-system, attitude, ―is concerned with our feelings,
including emotional reactions, judgments of behaviour and evaluation of
things‖.

Secondly, graduation, ―attends to grading phenomena whereby feelings
are amplified and categories blurred‖.
The last resource, engagement, ―deals with sourcing attitudes and the
play of voices around opinions in discourse‖. They focus mainly on the
emotion negotiated in a text.
The model below generally describes the three sub-types of appraisal.


7

ENGAGEMENT

monogloss
heterogloss

AFFECT
APPRAISAL

ATTITUDE

JUDGEMENT
APPRECIATION…

FORCE

raise

GRADUATION
lower
sharpen

FOCUS
soften
Figure 2.1: An overview of appraisal resource
(Martins and White, 2005: 38)

Among these types, attitude is the most considered term due to the
overall purpose of the thesis. Therefore, this resource is presented in more
details as follows.


8

Un/Happiness
In/Security
AFFECT
Dis/Satisfaction
Dis/Inclination
Propriety
Social sanction
Veracity
ATTITUDE

JUDGMENT
Capacity
Social esteem
Normality
Tenacity
Reaction
APPRECIATION

Composition
Valuation

Figure 2.2: Overview of attitude subsystems
(Martins and White, 2005: 38)

2.2. Attitude and their sub-types
According to Martin and White (2005: 35), attitude refers to the
evaluation towards feelings or ―emotional reactions, judgments of behaviour and
evaluation of things‖. Attitude consists of three sub-systems: affect, judgment
and graduation. As Martin and White (2005: 35-36) stated, affect is a resource
for the construal of emotion, judgment offers resources used to evaluate human
behaviors and appreciation provides evaluations toward products or processes of
things. The following figure shows the subtypes in details.


9

2.2.1. Affect
As Martin and Rose (2003: 28) mentioned, affect is a resource for the
construal of emotion. It is considered as ―resources for expressing feelings‖.
By using the resources, authors can express their emotional responses. The
following example can illustrate for the definition.
(2.1) Taylor Swift, the pop juggernaut, jumped sunnily into her debate
about the future of the music business on Monday,…
(Do, 2015: 48)
In examaple (2.1), the emotion is positive since the verb phrase
―jumped sunnily‖ expresses the feeling of happiness of Taylor Swift.
According to White (1998: 47-49), affectual resources can be realized
in a variety of ways as follows:

-

Through verbs of emotion (mental processes) such as to like/to

dislike, to love/to hate, to frighten/to reassure, to interest/to bore (e.g. I
love you more than you can imagine.)
-

Through

adverbs

(circumstance

of

manner)

such

as

happily/sadly,delightfully/disappointedly (e.g. He lives happily with his
wife in countryside.)
-

Through adjective of emotion such as satisfied/glad/happy,

worried/confident,

keen/uninterested,

frightened/confident,

angry/please (e.g. His coming makes me happy.)
-

Through

nominalization

such

as

joy/despair,

insecurity/confidence, happiness/worry, (e.g. The spirit has lifted this


10

country from the depths of despair to the great heights of hope.)
Also, Martin and White (2005: 58) suggest two grammatical frames
which consist of a relational attributive process with a conscious participant
involving the verb feel to realize affect: {person feels affect about something}
or {it makes person feel affect that [proposition]}.
In terms of classification, Martin and White (2005: 78) divide affect
based

on

types of emotions.

They are un/happiness, in/security,

dis/satisfaction or dis/inclination.
The un/happiness affect deals with the feeling of happiness or sadness.
The value involves ―affair of the heart‖ which displays in cry, wail, rubbish,
abuse, revile, chuckle, laugh, rejoice, shake hands, hug, embrace, down, sad,
miserable, dislike, hate, cheerful, buoyant, jubilant, be fond of, love, adore,
etc. The following example demonstrates how the word reveals the speaker‘s
happiness:
(2.2) The captain was happy.
(Martin and White, 2005: 47)
As can be seen, example (2.2) indicates that, the feeling construed via
the adjective ―happy‖ is positive emotion coded with happiness. By using the
word, the author wants to describe a girl who is in state of happiness.
The second type of emotion, as Martin and White (2005: 49)
mentioned, is the in/security affect, which is about ―feelings of peace and
anxiety in relation to our environs, including of course the people sharing
them with us‖. The resource is recognized through a variety of lexical items
such as restless, twitching, shaking, startle, cry out, faith, declare, assert,


11

proclaim, delegate, commit, trust, entrust, uneasy, anxious, doubts, startled,
jolted, confident etc. Let‘s look at example (2.3).
(2.3) ...The authors of the new study believe that the theories could be

true...
(Ngo, 2017: 48)
In example (2.3), it is indicated that the security item ―believe‖
employed in the utterance expresses a trust in the theories that there is a link
between declining Artic sea ice and air pollution in China.
The next category, as Martin and White (2005: 50) stated, is
dis/satisfaction dealing with ―feelings of achievement and frustration in
relation to the activities in which we are engaged, including our roles as both
participants and spectators‖. Some words belonging to this group includes:
fidget, yawn, tune out, caution, sclod, or attentive, flat, jaded, angry, fed up
with, satisfied, pleased, thrilled and so on. The following example illustrates
for the sub-type of affect.
(2.4) The captain felt absorbed.
(Martin and White, 2005: 49)
From example (2.4), according to Martin and White (2005: 51), it can
be seen that the expression ―adsorbed‖ is positive emotion encoded with
satisfaction as it dealt with interest, a sense of satisfaction.
The last group is termed dis/inclination concerning with the way that
the speakers incline or disincline to something. Some lexical items related to
the type are tremble, shudder, cower wary, disinclined, unwanted, fearful,


12

terrorized or words related to desire suggest, request, demand, keen, miss,
long for, wish to, yeanr for, etc. The following example with the verb
―Shudder‖ expressing a dis/inclination could illustrate for this.
(2.5) Dismantling France’s deep and complex dependence on diesel could
cost jobs and money in an economy with little maneuvering room.
Governments left and right have legislated in favor of diesel since the

1960s, and industry officials fear ending the tax breaks and subsidies
would drive consumers away from French cars at a time when the
country is struggling to stay globally competitive…
(Ngo, 2017: 45)
We note from example (2.5), the expression ―fear‖ directly construes
the disinclination of the participants toward Paris authorities‘ plans on
banning diesels by ending tax breaks and subsidies. Due to the sense of
meaning, ―fear‖ is realized as a dis/inclination resource.
The sub-systems of affectual resources are presented in Figure 2.3.


13

fear
DIS/INCLINATION

Wary, fearful, terrorised,

dis/inclination
TYPE

desire
Miss, long for, yearn for
misery
UNHAPPINESS
unhappiness
TYPE

UN/HAPPINESS

Cry, sad
antipathy
Abuse, hate

un/happiness
TYPE

cheer
HAPPINESS
Laugh, cheerful

happiness
TYPE
AFFECT

affection

affect

Hug, love

TYPE

disquiet
INSECURITY
insecurity

Restless, anxious

TYPE

surprise
IN/SECURITY

Cry out, jolted

in/security
TYPE

confidence
SECURITY
security

Declare, confident

TYPE
trust
Delegate,
comfortable with
ennui
DISSATISYawn, jaded

dissatisfaction
FACTION-TYPE

displeasure
DIS/SATISFACTION

Scold, angry

dis/satisfaction

TYPE

interest
SATISFACTION
satisfaction

Busy, involved

TYPE
pleasure
Compliment,
pleased

Figure 2.3: The affect system and its lexical instantiations
(Martin and White, 2005: 51)


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2.2.2. Judgment
Judgment is ―concerned with resources for assessing behavior
according to various normative principles‖ (Martin and White, 2005: 35).
That is, judgment provides resources for positive or negative evaluating
behaviors of others whether they are right or wrong, good or bad or
expressing admiration or criticism. Like affect, there are many ways to realize
the resources in texts. Grammatically, judgment can be realized based on the
frames including a relational attributive process: {it was judgement for
person/of person to do that} or {(for person) to do that was judgement}.
Martin and White (2005: 52) further state that judgment is composed of
two sub-systems: personal-value-based norms known as social esteem and

legal norm known as social sanction. Social esteem, concerns with normality
(how special someone is), capacity (how capable they are) and tenacity (how
dependable they are), whereas social sanction is about veracity (how truthful
someone is) and propriety (how ethical someone is). The tables below details
the two sub-system of judgment.
As illustrated in Tables 2.1 and 2.2, an overview of judgment sub-types
is provided. Specifically, as Martin and White (2005: 53) stated, Table 2.1
details the information on social esteem and Table 2.2 does the same on social
sanction. The former may have some influences on a person‘s image as it is
utilized to show the admiration or criticism. The broad category cover three
sub-systems: normality concerned with evaluations indicating how unusual
someone is; capacity expressing how capable people are and tenacity
disclosing how resolute they are. The latter, social sanction, is a resource
based on legal or religious rules. It is used to evaluate someone doing right or
wrong, thus it can be seen as the answer for the questions of legality or


15

morality. The system is made up of two main parts: veracity (how ―real‖
someone is) and propriety (how ethical someone is).
Table 2.1: Judgment – Social Esteem
(Martin and White, 2005: 53)

SOCIAL

Positive (admire)

Negative (criticize)

ESTEEM
Normality

Lucky, fortunate,

Unlucky, hapless, star-

―how

charmed...;Normal, natural,

cross…;Odd, peculiar,

special?‖

familiar…;Cool, stable,

eccentric…;Erratic,

predicable…;In, fashionable,

unpredictable…;Dated,

avantgarde…;

daggy, retrograde…;

Capacity

Powerful, vigorous, robust…;

Mild, weak,

―how

Sound, healthy, fit…; Adult,

whimpy…;Unsound, sick,

capable?‖

mature, experienced…; Witty,

cripped…;Immature,

humourous, droll…; Balanced,

childfish, helpless…;Slow,

together, same…;Sensible, expert,

stupid, thick…;Flaky,

shrewed…;Literate, educated,

neurotic, insane…;Native,

learned…;Competent,

inexpert, foolish…;Illiterate,

accomplished…;

uneducated, igrogant…;

Tenacity

Plucky, brave, heroic…;Cautious,

Timid, cowardly,

―how

wary, patient…;Careful,

gutless…;Rash, impatient,

dependable? thorough, meticulous…;Tireless,

impetuous…;Unreliable,

‖

persevering, resolute…;Faithful,

undependable…;Unfaithful,

loyyal, constant…;

disloyal,

inconstant…;Stubborn,
obstimate, wilful…;