Generic structure and APPRAISAL resources in the editorial article Free money

Abstract

Editorial is one of news genres aiming for opinion making and persuading. These functions determine that there are abundant evaluative resources in this genre. Exploring evaluative resources in the editorial could be conducive to understanding editorial text better and providing sensible suggestions for English learners to produce effectively persuasive writings. In view of this, the present study sets out to analyze the generic structure of the editorial Free money, then examine usage patterns of APPRAISAL resources in this text, and finally explore variations of APPRAISAL resources at different stages of the genre of this text. All APPRAISAL resources were coded based on APPRAISAL system and analyzed from quantitative and qualitative perspectives. It shows that Free money employed discussion genre with exposition and challenge embedded in the Background stage. An investigation into the usage of APPRAISAL resources found that negative ATTITUDE resources were mainly used to form the prosody of the text; more negation and concession resources within ENGAGEMENT were deployed to contract the dialogue; far more force raising GRADUATION resources were applied to amplify the evaluation. The APPRAISAL resources used at different stages of the editorial demonstrate distinct features with the aim of serving specific function of each stage. For instance, attribution resources were used in Issue stage to expand the dialogue and engage the readers; invoked resources were primarily employed in Background stage to make the statement objective; far more negative impressions in Side stage indicated the author’s concern, and more inscribed resources in Resolution stage manifested author’s attitude and made the conclusion impressive.