MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING QUY NHON UNIVERSITY NGUYỄN THỊ MỘNG VÂN AN APPRAISAL ANALYSIS OF ATTITUDINAL RESOURCES IN OPINION TEXTS IN CNN Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201 Supervisor : Assoc. Nguyễn Thị Thu Hiền e BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC QUY NHƠN NGUYỄN THỊ MỘNG VÂN NGUỒN NGÔN NGỮ DIỄN TẢ THÁI ĐỘ TRONG CÁC DIỄN NGÔN BÌNH LUẬN TRÊN KÊNH CNN THEO LÝ THUYẾT ĐÁNH GIÁ Chuyên ngành: Ngôn ngữ Anh Mã số: 8220201 Người hướng dẫn: PGS. Nguyễn Thị Thu Hiền e i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I hereby ceritfy that this thesis entitled “An Appraisal analysis of Attitudinal Resources in opinion texts in CNN” contains no material published elsewhere or extracted in the whole, or in part from a paper by which I have qualified for or been awarded another degree or diploma. Moreover, no one‟s work has been used without acknowledgement in the paper.
This paper has not been submitted to award any degree or diploma in any other territory institution. Binh Dinh, 2021 Nguyễn Thị Mộng Vân e ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In order to complete this thesis, it is not only my efforts but also other assistance of individuals to whom I really want to offer my deepest gratitude. First of all, I‟d like to express my special thanks to many people who gave me great help when I completed this thesis. I am deeply thankful to my supervisor, Assoc.
Nguyễn Thị Thu Hiền, who has given me much invaluable advice and encouragement since the very beginning and has been my frequent source of many invaluable insights. I am also grateful to her for reading my manuscript and helping me make the necessary changes. Secondly, I am also grateful to lecturers who have given the foundation for this thesis and all the staff of the Post-graduate Department at Quy Nhon University for their encouragement, kindness and administrative assistance. Thirdly, I also want to thank my colleagues for their encouragement and support.
I am grateful to my family and my husband, who have helped me overcome many difficulties throughout the course and the study of this thesis. Without them, I could not have overcome the trouble during this journey. e iii ABSTRACT This thesis presents the analysis of Attitudinal Resources in opinion texts in CNN based on the framework of Appraisal Theory by Martin and White, which is considered as a new approach to evaluating languages. The study aims at discovering the linguistic expressions expressing the attitude of Journalists and interpreting linguistic features of these expressions regarding Affect, Judgment, and Appreciation.
The combination of quantitative and qualitative methods was applied for the data analysis. The study shows that three sub-categories of Attitude are disproportionately used in the text. Specifically, Judgment occupied the largest proportion, the second highest was Appreciation and Affect was found to occur at the lowest rate. Besides, the research outcomes indicated that the more common employment of Positive and Explicit than Negative and Implicit ones.
Finally, as for the lexical features of these resources, the findings show a difference in using noun, adjective, adverb or verb to express the attitude. e iv TABLE CONTENT STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP. iii TABLE CONTENT. iv 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. An overview of Appraisal. Description of data.
Reliability and validity in the research. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION. General findings of the use of Attitudinal resources in opinion texts. Affect in opinion texts in CNN.
Frequency of Affect and its subcategories in opinion texts in CNN. Linguistic features of Affect values in opinion texts in CNN. Judgment in opinion texts in CNN. Sub-categories with Social Esteem and Social Sanction 43 4.
Linguistic features of Judgment values in opinion texts in CNN. Appreciation in Opinion texts in CNN. Sub-categories with Appreciation in Opinion texts in CNN. Linguistic features of Appreciation values in opinion texts in CNN.
CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS. Summary of the findings. Limitations and Suggestions for Further Study. 66 e vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AT: Apparaisal Theory SFL: Systemetic Functional Linguistics Instance: Ins (-) : Negative (+) : Positive e vii LIST OF TABLES Table 2.
Grammatical realizations of Affect. Sub-systems of Affect (Martin & White, 2005: 51). Judgements of esteem and sanction (Martin & White, 2005: 53). Types of Appreciation (Martin and White, 2005: 56).
Authorial and Non-authorial Affect in opinion texts in CNN. The detailed distribution of Social Esteem and Social Sanction in opinion texts in CNN. 44 e viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2. An Overview of appraisal resources (Martin & White, 2005: 38).
An overview of Attitude resources. Judgment and Appreciation as Institutionalized Affect. Frequency of Affect, Judgement and Appreciation in opinion texts in CNN. Sub-categories of Affect in opinion texts in CNN.
Positive and Negative Affect in opinion texts in CNN. Lexical features of Affect resources in opinion texts in CNN. Explicit and Implicit Judgment in opinion texts in CNN. Positive and Negative Judgments in opinion texts in CNN.
Lexical features of Judgment resources in opinion texts in CNN. The distribution of Reaction, Composition and Valuation. Explicit and Implicit Appreciation in opinion texts. Positive and Negative Appreciation in opinion texts.
Lexical features of Appreciation resources in opinion texts in CNN. 61 e 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION This chapter starts with the rationale, followed by the aim and objectives of the study, research questions, the significance of the study, and the study's scope. The design of the study is presented as the last section of the research. Rationale The opinion report has been developing tremendously because of the great need for collecting information from readers.
They are reading opinion reports daily because these are widely believed to help people be aware of the surroundings' constant changes. Each type offers different approaches to the world. The information in CNN opinion is constantly updated with the latest information worldwide for readers and viewers. There are many different ways of expressing attitude from sociologists, politicians, journalists, national security correspondents, theologians, political advisors, social justice scholars, writers and reporters in opinion reports.
Furthermore, for many recent years, there has been deeply growing interest in Appraisal. The theory has been applied in a wide range of fields of linguistics to describe and explain how people evaluate others and things. Martin & White (2005) claims that the Appraisal Theory (AT) framework is to explore, describe and explain the way language used to construct textual personas, evaluate, adopt stances, and manage interpersonal positioning and relationships. The Appraisal has shown to be a valuable tool for analyzing the texts in terms of attitudinal aspects of writers, and it has been improved by many scholars and applied to analyze different aspects of discourses.
There are many researchers addressing the issue of appraisal in such various genres e 2 as Interviews (Caldwell, 2009); Speeches (Wang, 2010); Editorials (Van, 2014); Marketing discourse (Alamsya et al, 2015). As a result, it can be found that AT has been applied in a wide variety of genres, which proves its significance as a theoretical framework to help understand the evaluative language. Attitude, along with Engagement and Graduation, forms the Appraisal System. It plays an integral role in the expression of interpersonal meanings of the language.
According to Martin and White (2005), Attitude deals with “our feelings including emotional reactions, judgements of behaviors and evaluation of things” (Martin and White, 2005: 35). Attitude relates to meanings by which speakers/writers assess and connect feeling and emotional responses with participants and processes. Martin and White (2005) state that Attitude is classified as three sub-types of meanings: Affect, Judgement, Appreciation. Affect is concerned with the expression of the feelings and emotions of human beings; While Judgement with the evaluation of the human beings‟ behaviours and actions according to normative principles, and Appreciation deals with valuation about the things, events, or phenomenon around us.
There have been many studies carried out employing the AT as a theoretical framework. However, there has not been any study of attitudinal resources in opinion texts in CNN, which means a gap is available for my thesis. Those reasons inspire and prompt me to research the attitudinal aspects in this genre. Aims and objectives 1.
Aims The study aims to find out linguistic expressions expressing the attitude of Journalists in CNN opinion texts based on the Appraisal framework by e 3 Martin and White (2005) and to interpret linguistic features of these expressions. Objectives For the aim mentioned above to be fulfilled, the research concentrates on the following objectives: - To identify and synthesize sub-types of Attitude in opinion texts in CNN. - To investigate the linguistic features of these resources. Research Questions The thesis addresses itself to answer the three following questions: 1.
What attitudinal resources are used in opinion texts in CNN? 2. How often are the three sub-types of attitudinal resources used in opinion texts in CNN? 3. What are the linguistic features of these attitudinal resources used in opinion texts in CNN? 1. Scope of the study It is clear that Appraisal framework contains three resources, namely Attitude, Graduation and Engagement.
However, I just explore the Attitude of socialists on CNN‟S opinion because of the time limitation and the potential popularity of this resource in this genre. Significance of the study Attitude is regarded as one of the most primary targets in the field of AT research. This study focuses on analyzing Attitude, which is concerned with feelings, including emotional reactions, judgments of behavior and evaluation of things, and its effectiveness on CNN‟s opinion. With its findings, the study emphasizes the importance of AT as a framework to help understand the language of evaluation used to express attitudes in this genre.
e 4 This study is expected to analyse some attiudes of socialists on CNN‟s opinion, which helps the research draw some conclusion that are of theoretical and practical significance. For theoretical significance, it provides an analysis study of effect in attitude values of AT. Through this research, we are able to have a sufficient foundation of knowledge on the attitude resources included in AT. Practically, by analyzing attitudinal resources used in speeches, this study certainly helps to find out and suggest the ways public speakers employ these elements to make their speeches successful and persuasive.
Organization of the study The study is organized into five chapters: Chapter 1, Introduction, includes the rationale, the aims and objectives, research questions, the scope of the study, the significance of the study, and the organization of the thesis. Chapter 2, Literature Review, presents a summary of AT, especially Attitude, and its three domains. Then, a brief review of the previous studies, which were based on the AT, is also described. Chapter 3, Research Methodology, consists of research methods encompassing data collection, data analysis, the reliability and validity of the research.
Chapter 4, Findings and Discussion, deals with analyzing and discussing the frequencies and the uses of subtypes of Attitude on CNN‟S opinion. Chapter 5, Conclusions and Implications, summarizes the significant findings and suggests implications for further study. In summary, this chapter serves to provide the preliminaries of the thesis. It starts with the rationale, followed by the aim and objectives of the study, research questions, the scope of the study, the importance of the study e 5 and the organization of the study.
In other words, Chapter 1 aims at offering an overview of the contents of the following chapters, contributing to sketching the research outline to follow. e 6 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter presents the theoretical framework the study is based on and the previous studies relating to the topic. It consists of two parts.