Chapter One   Introduction 

1.1   Research Background of the Study  
Newspaper  is  a  type  of  important  language  form.  It  is  of  significance  to understand the role it plays in society. It has massively affected people’s knowledge and  values,  and  to  a  great  extent,  this  kind  of  power  lies  in  the  use  of  language.  As one of the most popular mass medias in our daily life, news discourse is the core of news language research. Through news discourse, people can get access to the latest information.  Of  course,  it  serves  not  only  as  the  source  of  information  and entertainment,  but  also  subtly  alters  people’s  thoughts  and  beliefs.  As  we  all  know, news reflects the objective facts and one of the primary features of news discourse is truthfulness, so people tend to believe that news discourse should be value-free and impersonal.  However,  this  is  not  the  case.  Just  as  the  conversation  has communicators, news discourse has its writers and readers. So, it can be regarded as a  special  type  of  conversation.  In  the  news  discourse,  the  reporter  is  just  like  the communicators in the conversation. Disastrous  news  discourse  is  a  representative  of  all  types  of  news  discourse because  it  is  closely  related  to  people’s  life  and  human  security.  Disaster  refers  to grave  damage  to  human’s  life  that  is  natural  or  man-made.  The  disaster  can  be divided into two categories: one is natural disasters that can not be prevented, such as earthquakes,  floods,  typhoons  and  so  on;  the  other  is  human-caused  disasters,  like terrorism,  war,  plane  crash,  traffic  accidents  and  so  on.  In  my  view,  the  missing  of MH370  belongs  to  the  “third”  category,  which  is  neither  natural  disaster  nor human-caused disaster, or in other words, the reason of the missing of MH370 is not certain.  However,  the  impacts  of  disasters  on  human  life  and  properties  is  rather devastating.  Thus,  as  soon  as  the  event  happens,  it  becomes  the  focus  of &le  that  people  can  escape from the influence of certain news in modern society. However, what is news? There is no specific answer to the question. Scholars from different fields have attempted to come up with different definitions of news. They put forward various definitions of news from different views, but none of them gain unanimous acceptance around the world. In order to understand what news discourse is, it is necessary for us to make a clear definition of news firstly. Of course, the definitions differ in the emphasis that one puts. Oxford  English  Dictionary  and  Longman  Dictionary  of  English  Language  & Culture put the emphasis on the content of news discourse. The former defines news as  “tidings,  the  recent  happened  events,  the  new  information,  the  new  subject  of  a report.”  The  latter  defines  it  as  “facts  that  are  reported  about  a  recent  event  or events”. W.  Lance  Bennett  and  John  Bogart  pay  more  attention  to  the  features  of  news discourse.  Bennett  (1988)  states  that  news  usually  refers  to  the  timely  information.  And Bogart, once remarked “When a dog bites a man, that is not news, but when a man bites a dog that is big news”. 
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2.2 Classifications of News Discourse 
Based  on  different  criteria,  news  discourse  can  be  classified  into  various categories. Several common divisions are introduced here: According  to  the  content  of  reporting,  news  can  be  involved  in  many  aspects, including  political  aspects,  economic  aspects,  technological  aspects,  cultural  and entertainment aspects and sports aspects and so on.  In terms of the means of conveying, news is grouped into newspaper coverage, photo  news,  magazine  coverage,  radio  news,  TV  news,  cable  news  and  web  news, etc.  When  it  comes  to  the  news  stylistics,  news  is  grouped  into  newspaper  report, press interview, news comment and news feature and so on.  Regarding  to  the  geographical  scope  of  news  reporting,  news  is  grouped  into international ones, national ones and local ones.  On considering the character of news, there exist two kinds of news discourse: hard news and soft news (Rich, 2005. p. 23):   “In  general,  hard  news  means  the  latest  news  and  events  that  are  reported  timely, such  as  politics  news,  economic  news  etc.;  soft  news  refers  to  background information  or  stories  related  to  people’s  interests  including  art  news  and entertainment news and so on.” 
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Chapter Three   Theoretical Foundation ....... 17 
3.1 Appraisal Theory ........... 17 
3.1.1 Attitude System ............. 18 
3.1.2 Engagement System ...... 24 
3.1.3 Graduation System ........ 25 
3.2 Positive Discourse Analysis .............. 26 
Chapter Four   Data Analysis and Discussion ......... 28 
4.1 Data Analysis ...... 28 
4.2 PDA of the Selected News Reports: Attitude System Perspective ..... 29 
4.3 PDA of the Selected News Reports: Engagement System Perspective ........ 42 
4.3.1 Monogloss in the reports ......... 42 
4.3.2 Heterogloss in the reports ....... 45
4.3.3 Summary ............. 50 
4.4 PDA of the Selected News Reports: Graduation System Perspective .......... 50 
4.5 Summary ............. 53 
Chapter Five   Conclusion ........ 55 
5.1 Main Findings ..... 55 
5.2 Limitations and Suggestions ............. 55 

Chapter Four   Data Analysis and Discussion 

4.1 Data Analysis 

This  chapter  will  carry  out  a  concrete  PDA  of  the  selected  news  reports  from perspective of attitude system, engagement system and graduation system, which are the three sub-systems in AT. The following are respectively the titles and date of the ten reports: “154 Chinese missing” on March 9th; “Chinese Artists’ Group on Board MH370”  on  March  9th;  “The  Search  for  Flight  370  Goes  on”  on  March  10th; “Families Urge Expanded Search for Missing Flight as Their Hopes Fade” on March 11th;  “Mayor:  Sansha  Should  Have  Marine  Rescue  Base”  on  March  11th;  “Obama Voices  Sympathy”  on  March  11th;  “Insurance  Companies  May  Face  Large  Payouts in Airline Disaster” on March 12th; “Quicken Efforts to Find Plane, Malaysia asked” on  March  13th;  “The  Biggest  Mystery”  on  March  13th  and  “Q&A:  Experts  Offers Their Insights on MH370 Mystery” on March 14th. Just throughout the ten titles, we can see that four articles are involved in the search and rescue work which should be carried out in a timely and effective manner; two of them refers to the nature of the incident:  a  mystery;  two  articles  mainly  talk  about  the  attitudes  of  other  countries’ authorities towards the incident: Obama voices sympathy and Malaysia asks quicken efforts to find plane; the last two articles mentioned the total number of the missing Chinese people and the main occupational groups.  

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Conclusion

In  the  present  study,  through  the  specific  analysis,  we  have  proved  what  we pointed  out  in  the  first  chapter.  In  my  selected  disastrous  news  discourse, judgemental  meaning  occupies  the  largest  proportion  in  the  attitudinal  system.  The next is the affective meaning, and then is the appreciative meaning.  In  front  of  the  disaster,  the  government  officials  hold  positive  attitude  towards the incident; they firmly believe that through our joint efforts, we can surely put the losses  to  the  minimum  degree.  The  attitudes  of  the  families  and  the  friends  of  the missing passengers changes with the information they get about the incident and the process  of  the  search  and  rescue  work.  They  become  very  sensitive  to  any information  about  the  search  and  rescue  work.  Once  the  information  about  the incident  is  not  optimistic,  people’s  emotion  will  become  lower  and  lower  until  the collapse  point.  On  the  contrary,  if  people  can  read  the  positive  news,  then  they  will be full of confidence and energies.  So  in  order  to  reduce  the  panic  mood  to  the  minimum  state,  journalists  should try  to  use  as  much  as  positive  languages  on  the  basis  of  objectivity.  Also,  readers should see the positive aspects deeply hidden in the language and face the irresistible disaster with a relatively positive attitude. 
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