MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING QUY NHON UNIVERSITY TỐNG MỸ LINH A CONTRASTIVE STUDY OF ATTITUDINAL RESOURCES IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE NEWS REPORTS ON PLASTIC STRAWS Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201 Supervisor: Assoc. NGUYỄN THỊ THU HIỀN e BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC QUY NHƠN TỐNG MỸ LINH SO SÁNH ĐỐI CHIẾU NGHĨA THÁI ĐỘ VỀ ỐNG HÚT NHỰA TRÊN BÁO TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT Chuyên ngành : Ngôn ngữ Anh Mã số : 8220201 Người hướng dẫn: PGS. NGUYỄN THỊ THU HIỀN e i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I certify that this thesis A Contrastive Study of Attitudinal resources in English and Vietnamese News Reports on Plastic Straws contains no material extracted or published elsewhere except where reference is made in the study. This thesis has not been submitted for any degree and is not currently being submitted for any other degree or award.
Binh Dinh, 2020 Tong My Linh e ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to many individuals who have heartened me in various ways to achieve my accomplishment today. I would like to express my deep and sincere gratitude to my research supervisor, Assoc. Nguyen Thi Thu Hien for giving me the opportunity to do research and providing invaluable guidance throughout this thesis. Without her timely enlightenment, my M.
journey could have been interrupted. Her dynamism, vision, dedication and motivation have deeply inspired me. She has taught me the methodology to carry out the research and present the research as clearly as possible. It is really a great privilege and honor to work and study under her guidance.
Additionally, I gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness to all of my lecturers who play a significant role in nurturing my interest in linguistic research. They have provided me with interesting and useful lectures and created favorable conditions for me to enhance my skills and widen my horizon of the knowledge of Linguistics for the past two years. Next, my sincere thanks go to all of my classmates, M.A students of English course 21st at Quy Nhon University, who supported me during the time we took the course together. Last but absolutely not least, from the bottom of my heart, I owe my debt to my family for their unconditional love and tremendous encouragement.
Without their supports, I could not have overcome all the challenges and obstacles on my academic pathway. e iii ABSTRACT The thesis applied Appraisal Theory in a contrastive analysis of Attitudinal resources in English and Vietnamese news reports on plastic straws. The data is composed of 20 news reports (10 in English and 10 in Vietnamese) collected from reliable online websites. The study aims at discovering the similarities and differences between the two languages regarding Attitudinal resources, namely Affect, Judgment, and Appreciation.
The research outcomes indicated that the deployment of the Attitudinal resources in the English and Vietnamese corpus shared certain similarities such as the occurrence of all types of Attitudinal values and the more common employment of Positive and Explicit resources than Negative and Implicit ones. Despite the aforementioned similarities between the two languages, a number of differences were observed in terms of Affect and Judgment. The study hopefully provides the language learners useful knowledge of Appraisal and the features of the evaluative language employed by English and Vietnamese writers in their news reports. e iv ABBREVIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS ABBREVIATIONS Aff : Affect App : Appreciation Auth : Authorial Cap : Judgment: Capacity Comp : Appreciation: Composition EPSNRs : English plastic straws news reports Exp : Explicit Hap : Affect: Un/Happiness Imp : Implicit Inc : Affect: Dis/Inclination Judg : Judgment Non-Auth : Non-Authorial Nor : Judgment: Normality Prop : Judgment: Propriety Reac : Appreciation: Reaction Sat : Affect: Dis/Satisfaction Sec : Affect: In/Security Ten : Judgment: Tenacity Val : Appreciation: Valuation Ver : Judgment: Veracity VPSNRs : Vietnamese plastic straws news reports (-) : Negative (+) : Positive e v CONVENTIONS Italics are used for quotes, technical terms, emphasis, and examples Bold is deployed to mark the first use of technical terms In the numbered examples: Bold marks the use of what is being demonstrated.
e vi TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP. iii ABBREVIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS. vi LIST OF TABLES.
ix LIST OF FIGURES. Aim and objectives. Aim of the study. Objectives of the study.
Scope of the study. Significance of the study. Organization of the study. 4 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW.
An overview of Appraisal Theory. Application of Appraisal Theory in discourse analysis. 19 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY. Reliability and validity in the research.
27 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS. The overall usage of the Attitude resources in EPSNRs and VPSNRs 28 4. Affect resources in EPSNRs and VPSNRs. Sub-types of Affect resources in EPSNRs and VPSNRs.
Positive and Negative Affect resources in EPSNRs and VPSNRs. Authorial and Non-Authorial Affect resources in EPSNRs and VPSNRs. Judgement resources in EPSNRs and VPSNRs. Social Esteem and Social Sanction.
Positive and Negative Judgment resources in EPSNRs and VPSNRs. Explicit and Implicit Judgment resources in EPSNRs and VPSNRs. Appreciation resources in EPSNRs and VPSNRs. Sub-types of Appreciation resources in EPSNRs and VPSNRs.
Positive and Negative Appreciation resources in EPSNRs and VPSNRs. Explicit and Implicit Appreciation resources in EPSNRs and VPSNRs. 54 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS. Limitations of the study.
Suggestions for further research. 63 e ix LIST OF TABLES Table 2. Grammatical realizations of Affect. The system of Judgment.
Categories of Appreciation. Attitude sub-types in EPSNRs and VPSNRs. Authorial and Non-Authorial Affect resources in EPSNRs and VPSNRs. Sub-types of Judgment resources in EPSNRs and VPSNRs.
Explicit and Implicit Judgment resources in EPSNRs and VPSNRs. Explicit and Implicit Appreciation resources in EPSNRs and VPSNRs 54 e x LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2. An overview of appraisal resources. Sub-systems of Attitude.
Judgment and Appreciation as Institutionalized Affect. Sub-types of Affect resources in EPSNRs and VPSNRs. Positive and Negative Affect resources in EPSNRs and VPSNRs. Social Esteem and Social Sanction in EPSNRs and VPSNRs.
Positive and Negative Judgement resources in EPSNRs and VPSNRs 45 Figure 4. Sub-types of Appreciation resources in EPSNRs and VPSNRs. Positive and Negative Appreciation resources in EPSNRs and VPSNRs .52 e 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION In this chapter, the researcher begins with presenting all the preliminaries of the thesis. It starts with the rationale, followed by the aim and objectives of the study, research questions, the significance of the study and the scope of the study.
The organization of the study is presented as the last section of the research. Rationale It is indisputable that the utilization of plastic straws has become a hot issue lately. The small and seemingly harmless utensil that goes generally unnoticed in our everyday life has made it onto 2018‟s most-wanted list. If it is surprising to hear that plastic straws are receiving backlash, it may be even more astonishing to figure out about ninety one percent of the plastic we use is not recycled and instead ends up in landfills or the ocean.
It is estimated that an average person uses 1.6 straws per day, which means around 8.5 billion plastic straws are thrown away each year, potentially contributing to over 150 million tons of plastic in the world‟s oceans. Because of the statistics, some municipalities and corporations are starting to make efforts to fight pollution and control the utilization of plastic straws. Additionally, numerous talks, videos, news reports and documentaries have been carried out to partially contribute to eliminating plastic straws and increasing public awareness of the issue. However, news reports are considered an effective tool to reflect social issues as well as one of the most popular access for those desiring to expand their horizons.
Indeed, the success of any news reports are attributed to not only the degree of the issues‟ influence but also the reporters themselves knowing how to get their outcome across to the viewers. e 2 It cannot be denied that the framework of Appraisal Theory, which was conducted by a group of scholars led by two linguists, namely James Martin and Peter White in the 1980s and 1990s, is considered the theory in psychology that emotions are extracted from our evaluations (appraisals or estimates) of events that cause specific reactions in different people. Essentially, our appraisal of a situation causes an emotional, or affective, response that is going to be based on that appraisal. Martin & White (2005) claims that Appraisal Theory framework is a particular approach to exploring, describing and explaining the way language is used to evaluate, adopt stances, construct textual personas and manage interpersonal positioning and relationships.
Therefore, Appraisal Theory framework is seen as an effective tool for analyzing attitude expressions and interpersonal meanings in various types of discourse such as literary works, advertisements, talks, news, academic and narrative discourse. There have been some studies carried out, employing the Appraisal Theory as a theoretical framework. In respect of English literary works, Liu (2013) carried out a case study investigating the employment of evaluative language between the high-rated and low-rated English argumentative essays by EFL students in two Chinese universities. An attitudinal analysis of the novel Great Gatsby by F.
Scott Fitzgerald was carried out by Hadidi & Mohammadbagheri-Parvin (2015). Xiaolin Liu (2010) tried to apply Appraisal Theory into teaching process in an attempt to get better results for students of English. Vo Duy Duc (2011) studied journalistic voices operating in English Vietnamese hard news reports in the light of Appraisal Theory. Additionally, Appraisal Theory was also applied to examine the social attitudes in news reports towards an important event.
Nguyen Thi Thu Hien (2016) carried out researching the social attitudes in news reports towards President Obama‟s visit e 3 to Vietnam. As a result, it can be found that Appraisal Theory has been applied in a wide variety of genres, which proves its significance as a theoretical framework to help understand the evaluative language. However, there has not been any contrastive study of attitudinal resources in English and Vietnamese news reports towards plastic straws, which means there is a gap available for my thesis. It is for those reasons that inspire and prompt me to conduct a research on the attitudinal aspects of the news reports towards plastic straws with the topic: “A Contrastive Study of Attitudinal resources in English and Vietnamese News Reports on Plastic Straws.
Aim and objectives 1. Aim of the study The study primarily aims to investigate Attitudinal resources used in English and Vietnamese news reports towards plastic straws to find out the similarities and differences in the way English and Vietnamese authors show their attitudes on such issue. Objectives of the study For the aforementioned aim to be fulfilled, the research concentrated on the following objectives: - To identify the Attitudinal resources in English and Vietnamese news reports on plastic straws and their occurrence to reveal the choice of language of evaluation in the reports; - To discuss the similarities and discrepancies regarding the Attitudinal resource in English and Vietnamese news reports on plastic straws. Research questions The study addresses itself to answering the two following questions: 1.
Which Attitudinal resources are used and how often are they used in English and Vietnamese news reports on plastic straws? e 4 2. What are the similarities and differences of the Attitudinal resources in English news reports and those in Vietnamese news reports on plastic straws? 1. Scope of the study Though the Appraisal Theory is composed of three domains, precisely Attitude, Engagement and Graduation, this study focuses on the Attitudinal resources, namely Affect, Judgment, and Appreciation due to their considerable significance in revealing attitudes meeting the aim of the study.