Graduation System Analysis of Russia-Ukraine War News in New York Times and Russia Today: Evaluative Language Use in Media Discourse

Abstract

Graduating meaning, up-scaled or down-scaled, by using force (i.e., intensification and quantification) and focus (i.e., sharpening and softening) is a linguistic aspect indispensable in conveying attitude. This study is concerned with investigating such graduating formulations adopted by New York Times (NYT) and Russia Today (RT) as part of the Russia-Ukraine media war. The study makes use of the graduation system of Appraisal theory by Martin and Rose (2003) and Martin and White (2005). The data consist of (8) texts, (4) from each newspaper. These representative samples are analyzed qualitatively to show how writers employ graduating strategies to convey their attitudes regarding the Russia- Ukraine conflict. The findings obtained from the analysis show diversity in using these graduating formulations. The writers of both newspapers (NYT and RT) employ different graduating strategies, such as force: intensification and quantification, and focus: sharpening and softening. The significance lies behind this study is that strengthening and weakening the degree of meaning is an essential part of media discourse that authors employ to make their style more effective and more powerful