ABSTRACT
This chapter continues to approach PDA at the discourse semantic level. Political strategies are basically built of and around words. A political actor’s expression of self alters his or her social distance with the audience; his presentation of perspective or viewpoint opens up or closes down the discourse space of negotiation, and his indication of the source of proposition in the utterance enhances or diminishes the reliability of the proposition in his or her discourse. The adoption of these strategies depends on the intention of (re)alignment with the other political actors as well as the audience in the event. This chapter applies Martin and White’s APPRAISAL theoretical framework to analyze the discourse of a government official, Chief Secretary for Administration Carrie Lam, who was also the leader of the Task Force on Constitutional Development and the government officials in the televised political meeting. It first reviews the three semantic dimensions of appraisal: ATTITUDE, ENGAGEMENT and GRADUATION. Then, it offers a detailed account of the activated semantic selections by the government officials and the student representatives: firstly, on their use of attitude resources, by AFFECT, JUDGEMENT and APPRECIATION; secondly, on their use of ENGAGEMENT resources, by both MONOGLOSS and HETEROGLOSS; and thirdly, on their use of GRADUATION resources, by both FOCUS and FORCE. Overall, this chapter discusses how appraisal resources are used in political discourse with respect to the speaker’s identity, role and agenda.
