THE MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING QUY NHON UNIVERSITY PHITSAKHONE TANSAVATH AN INVESTIGATION INTO ATTITUDINAL RESOURCES IN ENGLISH LOVE SHORT STORIES Field: English Language Code: 8.01 Supervisor: Võ Duy Đức, Ph.D BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC QUY NHƠN PHITSAKHONE TANSAVATH NGHIÊN CỨU NGHĨA THÁI ĐỘ TRONG CHUYỆN NGẮN TÌNH YÊU TRONG TIẾNG ANH Chuyên ngành: Ngôn ngữ Anh Mã số: 8.01 Người hướng dẫn: Võ Duy Đức, Ph.D i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP Except where reference is made in the text of the research paper, this thesis “ An Investigation into Attitudinal Resources in English love short stories” contain no material published elsewhere or extracted in the whole, or in part from paper by which I have qualified for or been award another degree or diploma. Moreover, no one’s work has been used without acknowledgement in the paper. This paper has not been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any other territory institution. Binh Dinh, June 2019 Phitsakhone TANSAVATH ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are many who deserve recognition here for their contributions to this work.
First, I would like to acknowledge my deep indebtedness to my supervisor, Doctor Võ Duy Đức for his enthusiastic guidance and valuable suggestions. Without his immense help, I would never have completed my thesis. I would like to express my sincere thanks to all of my professors at Quy Nhon University for their useful lectures that provided a solid foundation for me to carry out the study. Lastly, I am deeply grateful to my friends who gave me great encouragement and interesting discussions as well as all of the member of my family for their love, understanding and support.
iii ABSTRACT The study aims to examine attitudinal resources used in English love short stories. Appraisal Theory developed by Martin and White (2005) was employed as a framework to analyze thirty English love short stories. The data was mainly collected from Chobir Dokan and Success of Life, which are blogs about love, friendship, and life. The combination of quantitative and qualitative methods was applied for the data analysis.
The findings show that Affect resources are used the most in the stories, followed by Judgment and finally Appreciation. The findings also show that implicit judgment on human behavior depicted in the English love short story occurs more frequently than explicit one. The study makes some theoretical and practical contribution to language learning, teaching and translating practices. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP.
III LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. VI LIST OF TABLES. VII LIST OF FIGURES. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES.
SCOPE OF THE STUDY. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY. ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY. Systemic Functional Linguistics.
METHODS AND PROCEDURES. DESCRIPTION OF DATA. RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION.
GENERAL FEATURES OF ARS IN ENGLISH LOVE SHORT STORIES (ELSSS). ARS OF AFFECT. ARS OF JUDGMENT. ARS OF APPRECIATION.
CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH. 60 vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AT: Appraisal Theory SFL: Systemic Function Linguistics ARs: Attitudinal Resources ELSSs: English Love Short Stories vii LIST OF TABLES Tables Title Page Number number 2.1 Affect - Dis/Inclination 7 2.2 Affect - Un/happiness (Martin and White, 2005: 49) 8 2.3 Affect - In/security 8 2.4 Affect - Dis/satisfaction 9 2.5 Judgements of Esteem and Sanction 11 2.6 Types and Sub-types of Judgment 12 2.7 Types of appreciation (Martin and White, 2005: 56) 13 4.1 ARs in thirty short love stories 24 4.2 Affect in the ELSSs 25 4.3 Judgment in ELSSs 36 4.4 Appreciation in ELSSs 44 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure Title Page Number number 2.1 Sub-system 0f Attitude (Martin & White, 2005:42-58) 15 4.1 ARs of Affect 26 4.2 ARs of Judgment in ELSSs 37 4.3 ARs of Appreciation in ELSSs 44 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale We – human beings are distinct from animals since we communicate through language.
It is our most important tool in expressing our thoughts and feelings to each other. Language influences what we think and how we think; language gives us a way of reflecting on our thinking, talking about our thinking, thereby enabling us to greater control over our thinking. It can be seen clearly that learning a language cannot be separated from learning the culture where the language is spoken. This means language is one among other products of cultures.
This integration of cultures is carried out in various areas of daily life such as economy, politics, sports, tourism, art and literature. Literature is said to be a reflection of the society in which there are good values and ills. Literature, as a mirror of human life, often presents a picture of what people think, say and do in the society. It also commends virtues or good values for people in the society to emulate.
These can be found in all genres of literature, especially in love short stories, in which we can discover the feelings of love through the language - attitudinal values - the writers often employ to convey their messages towards the readers. Hallidays’s (1994) view on language and language learning address the relationship between social meaning and language form. Instead of describing language as a self contained system of rules, he has attempted to describe it in terms of its use as a symbolic system reflecting the meanings generated and shared within social group. Therefore, the concept of language is a tool to convey our thoughts, ideas, concepts or feelings.
The Appraisal Theory (AT) is an extension of the linguistic theories of Halliday (1994) and his colleagues - Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). 2 It has emerged over a period of almost 15 years as a result of the work conducted by a group of researchers led by Professor James Martin of the Linguistics Department of the University of Sydney. AT is an approach to exploring, describing and explaining the way language is used to evaluate, to adopt stances, to construct textual personas and to manage interpersonal positioning and relationships. As has been observed in the works on AT, the issue of showing emotion through language has been an interest for researchers using functionally and semiotically oriented approaches.
AT can be also considered a full-blown theory that provides those linguists with a systematic and thorough approach in doing the research on the issue of using emotional elements in any kinds of discourse. These have inspired me to carry out the study “An investigation into Attitudinal Resources in English love short stories” with the aim to find out how the writers employ attitudinal resources to convey their messages towards the readers. On the basis of the results of the study, I can give some suggestions in teaching and learning English as a foreign language. Aims and objectives 1.
Aims This study was carried out to uncover and analyze attitudinal resources used in English love short stories. The study further attempts to demonstrate how the identified attitudinal elements function to convey the messages of the writers towards the readers. Objectives The objectives of the study are: 1. To find out the attitudinal resources employed in English love short stories; 3 2.
To examine how the identified attitudinal resources are used to convey the messages of the writers towards the readers. Research questions The study aims at investigating the following questions: 1. What types of attitudinal resources are used in English love short stories? 2. How are the identified attitudinal resources used to convey the messages of the writers towards the readers? 1.
Scope of the study We would like to study English love short stories in the light of Appraisal Theory by Martin (2005). Because of the limitation of time and our own ability, in this thesis we just mainly focus on the attitudinal resources employed to convey the messages of the writers. Moreover, the relevant data are taken just from thirty English love short stories. Significance of the study Findings of the study are expected to offer both theoretical and practical contributions.
Theoretically, the findings of the study will provide the information for further research to be done on this field using Appraisal Theory. Practically, the study will provide some practical suggestions for teaching and learning English as a foreign language. Organization of the study The study is organized into five chapters as follows: Chapter 1, Introduction, contains the rationale, aims and objectives, research questions, the scope of the study, the significance of the study, and the organization of the study. 4 Chapter 2, Literature Review provides the theoretical background on which the present study is based.
Also, this chapter presents a review of previous studies on the topic of the thesis. Chapter 3, Research Methodology and Procedure, describes research methods, research procedures, description of data, data analysis. Besides, reliability and validity of the data are mentioned in this chapter. Chapter 4, Findings and Discussion, focuses on analyzing the data and discussing the results found through the analysis of data.
Chapter 5, Conclusions and Implications, gives a summary of the results of the study. It also offers the implications, the limitations of the study and the suggestions for further research. 5 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter consists of two parts. The first part will present the theories which are relevant to the purpose of the study.
The second part is the description of the prior research related to the study. Systemic Functional Linguistics Although it has been mentioned in the previous chapter that AT is a full-blown theory about emotion in text, the theory is still put “under the heading” of another theory: SFL, Systemic Functional Linguistics, was first introduced and developed by the English linguist Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday, emeritus professor of linguistics at the University of Sydney, Australia. It is an approach to linguistics that considers language as a social semiotic system. Halliday (1994:53) introduces the general functional concepts which relate to the three aspects of the meanings of the clause: ideational, interpersonal, and textual.
He states that they are “different kinds of meaning potential that relate to the most general functions that language has evolved to serve. Ideational meanings deal with the way the language represents the interlocutor’s experience. Interpersonal meanings focus on the interactivity of the language which is used to describe interaction and to convey attitudes. Textual meanings tend to organize experiential and interpersonal meanings into a linear and coherent whole.
Halliday (1994) states that the interpersonal meta-function can be realized lexico-grammatically by mood and modality. Mood system, which consists of Subject and Finite element, is the system to establish and maintain roles and role relationships between interlocutors. Modality system, which 6 can be further divided into Modalization and Modulation, refers to the intermediate ground between positive and negative polarity. It functions to express the speaker’s attitude and judgement.
It is worth noting that the interpersonal metafunction serves to be the basis of the whole enterprise of AT. The following section deals with this theory in detail. Appraisal Theory Appraisal is a relatively new branch of linguistics, developed primarily by Martin (2005) and his colleagues and derived from Halliday’s theory of Systemic Functional Linguistics. A great deal of their work is derived from the University of Sydney, Australia.
According to White (2001: 1), Appraisal is defined as “An approach to exploring, describing and explaining the way language is used to evaluate, to adopt stances, to construct textual personal and to manage interpersonal positionings and relationships”. AT concerns itself with the interpersonal meaning of a language. It is considered to be a significant development within the paradigm of SFL. The major concerns of AT include how writers or speakers express their stance toward the things or on-going events in the world, how they express their agreement or disagreement with the potential responses from the other readers, and how they establish and strengthen their identities in a text or discourse.