Acknowledgements My appreciation goes to a number of people for their invaluable contributions, direct or indirect, to assisting me accomplish my thesis. 

I would like to express my warmest gratitude to my supervisor, Professor for his instant, patient, and enlightening instructions. Thanks also goes to his generosity in spending so much time and energy helping me figure out the problems I encounter at every stage of my thesis. Every time I finished one stage of my thesis, he revised my work carefully. His precise and responsible attitude toward every detail of my writing perfects my thesis and encourages me to be cautious in writing my thesis.44159

I shall extend my thanks to seniors, my roommates, and friends who give my advice and inspirations for my thesis.  

 Modality and Attitude：Discourse analysis of VOA and BBC reports on Sino-Japanese relationship

Abstract Modality is a means for the speaker to express viewpoints on validity of the assertion and judgments of the proposals. Halliday subpides modality into four orientations which are explicit objective orientation, explicit subjective orientation, implicit objective orientation, and implicit subjective orientation. Modality orientations are realized in different ways according to the degree of the speaker’s responsibility of the utterance. Since English is the most widely used language in the world, the impact of America and western countries on news is stronger than China’s. It is possible that the national image of China is discursively constructed by the foreign reporters so as to help Japan win supports. 30 VOA and BBC reports on Sino-Japanese relationship are collected as samples. The study explores the role of modal expressions in different orientations by calculating the rate of different kinds of modal expressions and further discusses VOA and BBC journalists’ attitudes towards these two countries for the long-lasting conflicts between them. The results demonstrate that VOA and BBC reports are inclined to adopt implicit subjective orientation and sustain Japan instead of China.

Keywords: Sino-Japanese relationship; modality; image; attitude

情态和态度——BBC和VOA中日关系新闻报道语篇分析 

摘要情态是说话者表达对断言的态度以及对建议的判断的一种手段。韩礼德将情态分为显性客观、显性主观`吹冰^文*论|文\网www.chuibin.com、隐性客观和隐性主观四种情态。根据说话者对话语所承担的责任程度不同，情态取向表达以不同形式在文本中得以体现。由于英语是当今世界上使用最广泛地语言，美国以及其他西方国家对于媒体的影响力强于中国。中国国际形象有可能被外国媒体歪曲，并以此帮助日本在中日冲突中获得支持。本文任意选取了30篇VOA和BBC中日新闻报道为语料，对每种情态表达在语料中所占比例进行量化分析，计算每种情态取向所含情态表达的比例，并进一步讨论在不同情态取向下各类情态表达所反映出的中日国际形象。研究结果显示VOA和BBC中日新闻倾向于采用隐性主观取向，在中日争端上维护日本。

毕业论文关键词：中日关系；情态；形象；态度

Contents

1. Introduction 2

1.1 Literature Review 2

1.1.1 Studies on news report 2

1.1.2 Studies on modality 3

1.2 Research purposes and significances 4

1.3 Research questions 4

1.4 Thesis structure