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ver,most research scopes are from the perspectives of structural features or stylistics and thestudies from perspective of appraisal theory are limited.
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Chapter Two Literature Review

This chapter firstly gives a brief introduction of editorial, which includes the definition ofeditorial, purpose of editorial and previous studies of editorial at home and abroad. Then, itreviews the appraisal theory, which includes the previous studies of appraisal theory and theapplication of appraisal theory. Lastly, it is concerned with the application of engagementresources.

2.1 Previous Studies of Editorial
Editorial is a common genre of news discourse but it also have some differences withother genres. Different scholars put forward different definitions from different perspectives.M.Lyle Spencer (1924:16), in the book of Editorial Writing, defines editorial asfollows:“An editorial may be defined as a presentation of fact and opinion in concise, logical,pleasing order for sake of entertaining, of influencing opinions, or of interpreting significantnews in such a way that its importance to the average reader will be clear.”Flint (1926:1) defines the editorial as “the published expression of the opinions of aneditor, through which men have satisfied their instinct to spread ideas, storm centers of thoughtand furnish its natural habitat.”In the Oxford Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary, an editorial is animportant article in a newspaper that expresses the editor’s opinion about an item of news oran issue.According to Wikipedia, an editorial is a phrase or article by a news organizationnewspaper or magazine that express the opinion of the editor, editorial board or publisher.In order to analyze the editorial well, it is essential to have a knowledge of the definition.What we pay great attention to is its purpose and how it achieves the purposes.
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2.2 An Overview of Appraisal Theory
According to M.A.K.Halliday (1989: 994), there are three meta-functions of language:ideational functions, textual function and interpersonal function. Among the three functions,interpersonal function of language refers to the negotiating social relationship: how peopleinteract with each other and how the relationship are established, maintained and changed inthe conversation. However, most studies of interpersonal meaning in the framework of SFLfocus on the mood and modality while others means such as semantic evaluation is only simplymentioned and neglected. With a set of appraisal resources, a text’s propositions and findingswill be positioned obviously. In this section, we focus on the original of appraisal theory, therelated studies of appraisal theory and studies of application of engagement resources.In the 1990s, Jame R.Martin and his colleges mentions appraisal theory in a projectnamed “Write it right” of New South Wales Disadvantaged Schools Program, in which theyexplores the evaluation of narrative discourse and literacy discourse at first and then extendsthe scope to other discourses.Over the past decades, appraisal phenomenon are investigated by many scholars fromdifferent perspectives. There are a variety of terms having been used in exploring apprais alphenomena of language, such as “evaluation” (Labov, 1972; Thompson&Hunston, 2000), “modality”(Stubbs, 1996; Halliday, 1994), “attitude” (Halliday, 1994), “stance” (Biber andFinegan, 1988;