评价资源对布什演讲中人际意义的阐释力研究2-5.docVIP

evaluative language. It is assumed that appraisal resources (or the language of evaluation) in public speeches are drawn upon by the addresser to construct various relationships with the audience for the purpose of persuasion. Due to the importance and significance of political speeches and also the meaningfulness of evaluative language, the present research pays special attention to the appraisal resources in the speeches by which the president chooses to manipulate interpersonal relationship, to maintain solidarity, to get alignment with the audience, and finally to enhance persuasion in his political speech. 1.1 Literature Review of Public Speech The analysis of public speech is scarcely new. It could date back to the western tradition of rhetoric in the ancient Greece, which is essentially a means of codifying and through which public orators use language for persuasion and other purposes. The word rhetoric is defined by Cockcrofts (1992) as the art of persuasive discourse. The language in the speech is used as a means to persuade people to accept the orators version of events in competition with other versions, which is the heart of rhetoric. Therefore, it is popularly used in public dialogue. As early as the fifth century B.C., Corax and Tisias began to teach their students the rudiments of oratory as demanded by democratic society; their subject, named as rhetoric, was taken up at Athens. Then Aristotle took up the subject, and saw it as an art founded in logic and adapted to the realities of human and circumstantial imperfection. In the year 336 B.C., he published his master piece Rhetoric, in which he held that the art of rhetoric consisted of examining the available means of persuasion and persuasion was achieved through three means, which was logical appeal, emotional appeal and ethical appeal (Li, 1997). According to Thompson and Huston (2000:5), evaluation is a broad cover term for the expression of the speaker s or writer s attitude or stan