Semantic Prosody Analysis for Commentary of China‟s National Publicity Film Based on Appraisal Theory

This paper intends to explore the semantic prosody constructed in the commentary text of China’s National Publicity film, by using the appraisal framework, and to explain how the prosody stringing throughout the text assists to achieve the film’s communicative goal. Its main theoretical framework is based on Appraisal Theory and also combines the analysis of Tenor and Prosody (prosodic structure) to study the interpersonal meaning of the commentary text of China’s national publicity film, aiming to probe into whether the prosody constructed in the text can achieve its communicative goal or not, that is, letting the overseas public know and understand a real and positive image of China, by which a model including three steps, that is, 1) analyzing the Tenor; 2) Analyzing and tagging the appraisal resources; 3) Constructing prosody of the text, is been applied. In data analysis, the author tags all appraisal resources of the text and then probes into their attributions to figure out whether they are consistent with text’s communicative goal. The research result proves that as a publicity film, it is reasonable to have the positive resources of Appreciation and Judgment foregrounded in the text and hence to demonstrate a positive image to the addressees.