Positive Discourse Analysis: Harmonious Attitudinal Prosody——A Study of Chinese Tour Guide Commentary

In this paper, we intend to explore this topic from the perspective of positive discourse analysis and to explain how the tour guide aligns tourists with tour guide commentary to publicize scenic spots and culture.Since positive discourse analysis is a newly developed approach without any fixed model, we integrate Genre Theory, Appraisal Theory and Prosody Theory as the theoretical foundations, on the basis of which an attitudinal prosody analyzing model is shaped.Our research shows that tour guide commentary is one form of the institutional language.It is a staged, goal oriented, social process with special generic structure.Its stages are:Welcome, General Introduction, Specific Commentary, Evaluation and Send-off.Attitudinal Prosodic Structure is a general hierarchical structure which has some common features.And the attitudinal prosodic movements of tour guide commentary have special features.The internal mechanism of Attitudinal Prosodic Structure is three general modes of attitudinal prosody-the modes of wave, dispersion and scalar homeostatic flowing in discourse, making it a harmonious unity.