摘要
As a new field in the Discourse Analysis, Positive Discourse Analysis (PDA) is increasingly arousing more attention of linguistic scholars at home and abroad. However, in the field of the concession addresses, the studies on this kind of political text are limited. The winners of presidential election always draw much attention from the world and their speeches, for example, presidential inaugural address has been a hot study topic of linguistics. Nevertheless, the losers of presidential election are always neglected by the world and the study on concession address is scarce and rare. Therefore, the meaning of study on the concession speech helps fill the gap of the discourse analysis. This thesis applies the PDA under the framework of appraisal theory to analyze five concession speeches with a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches. This study aims to complement CDA (Critical Discourse Analysis) to emphasize positive social construction of political discourse.