VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES POST GRADUATE DEPARTMENT BES ae fe 24g 24s 218 oe fe oe 24s of os dc oie 2k of ois ok oe 2 NGUYEN MAI LE AN ANALYSIS OF THE EVALUATIVE LANGUAGE IN NEWS ABOUT ISLAMIC STATES ON CABLE NEWS NETWORK (CNN) AND CHANNEL NEWS ASIA (CNA) FROM NOVEMBER 30, 2014 TO DECEMBER 10, 2014 IN LIGHT OF APPRAISAL THEORY M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English linguistics Code: 60220201 HANOI - 2015 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES POST GRADUATE DEPARTMENT BES ae fe 24g 24s 218 oe fe oe 24s of os dc oie 2k of ois ok oe 2 NGUYEN MAI LE AN ANALYSIS OF THE EVALUATIVE LANGUAGE IN NEWS ABOUT ISLAMIC STATES ON CABLE NEWS NETWORK (CNN) AND CHANNEL NEWS ASIA (CNA) FROM NOVEMBER 30, 2014 TO DECEMBER 10, 2014 IN LIGHT OF APPRAISAL THEORY M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English linguistics Code: 60220201 Supervisor: Nguyễn Thị Minh Tâm, Ph.D HANOI - 2015 ACCEPTANCE Thereby state that I: Nguyen Mai Le from group K22B, ULIS, VNU, being a candidate for the degree of Master of Arts, accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Master’s Graduation Paper deposited in the library. In terms of these conditions, I agree that the origin of my paper deposited in the library should be accessible for the purpose of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the librarians for the care, loan or reproduction of the paper. Hanoi, July 15th 2015 Nguyen Mai Le ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This thesis would not have been possible without the generous support from many people. First and foremost, I would like to show my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Nguyen Thi Minh Tam, Ph.D, who enthusiastically followed, checked, and gave constructive comments on my work.
Without her valuable guidance and expertise during the writing process, I would not be able to reach the thesis completion today. In addition, I am truly grateful to all teachers in Postgraduate Department, ULIS, VNUH for their devotion to providing me with deep English linguistics knowledge and precious consultancy. To me, they are a true inspiration for my pursuit of the career after graduation. Last but not least, I am eternally indebted to my family — my parents and my brother — and my close friend Pham Thuy Mai, who exhorted me to start the thesis and cheered me during the process.
il ABSTRACT The research focuses on exploring evaluative language in news about IS on CNN and CNA from November 30, 2014 to December 10, 2014 in the light of Appraisal theory. With careful investigation, the paper finds out how evaluative language is realized in news and points out similarities and differences between writers’ journalistic stances on CNN and writers’ journalistic stances on CNA about IS. Additionally, the paper offers suggestions for further studies in the given topic. For accomplishments of these objectives, content analysis and statistical analysis are employed as data analysis instruments.
Despite the writer’s sustained efforts and serious work, the paper cannot avoid shortcomings. The writer hopes that this study will make a small contribution to translation studies and translation training. ill TABLE OF CONTENT Y0) vn. 1 Acknowled€Im€hIf.
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Article content amalySis .:cceesccesececeeneeeesceeeeeeeeeneeesaeeeeneees 23 PART C: CONCLUSION. HH HH HH nh ưệt 35 1. Main findings of the Study 11. The evaluative language is realized in the news about IS on CNN 1.
Similarities and differences between writers’ journalistic stances on CNN and writers’ journalistic stances on CNA about IS. Similarities between writers’ journalistic stances on CNN and writers’ journalistic stances on CNA about IS. Differences between writers’ journalistic stances on CNN and writers’ journalistic stances on CNA about IS. Suggestions for further Studies.
Contributions of the Study oo.- HH HH TH HH TH nu HH 39 APPENDIX I LISTS OF ABBREVIATIONS CNN Cable News Network CNA Channel News Asia E. Example IS Islamic States + Positive attitude - Negative attitude vi LISTS OF FIGURES AND TABLES Page Figure 1: An overview of Appraisal resources 7 Figure 2: A summary of percentage of Affect in news on CNN and 17 CNA (%o) Figure 3: A summary of percentage of Judgment in news on CNN and 19 CNA (%o) Figure 4: A summary of percentage of Appreciation in news on CNN 20 and CNA (%b) Table 1: | Grammatical realizations of Affect 9 Table 2: Sub-categories of Affect 10 Table 3: Affect- Un/happiness, in/security, dis/satisfaction 11 Table 4: Judgment 11 Table 5: | Appreciation 12 Table 6: Articles on CNN 15 Table 7: Articles on CNA 16 Table 8: Distribution of Appraisal resources on CNN and on CNA 17 vil PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale for the study It is undeniable that language plays an important role in life of human beings. Language can be used to express the writer's/speaker's opinion on people, things and situations.
For the past several years, there have been many attempts to study the linguistic mechanisms employed by speakers and writers to convey their personal feelings and assessments. Such investigations have been carried out using a wide range of conceptual and theoretical approaches, including stance (Biber, 2006), metadiscourse (Hyland & Tse, 2004), evaluative, attitudinal or affective language (Ochs, 1989), evidentiality (Chafe & Nichols, 1986), and evaluation (Hunston, 1994; 2011). Especially, Martin and White (2005) developed an elaborate system called Appraisal theory allowing linguistic analysis of a text from the perspective of the evaluative properties of this text. The Appraisal theory is concerned with a) how text producers (writers or speakers) construe particular authorial identities for themselves, b) how authors align or do not align themselves with actual or potential respondents, and c) how writers or speakers construct an ideal audience for their texts (Martin & White, 2005; Pankovskyi, 2013).
This approach is related to the stance, language usage, and response. The Appraisal theory is thus suitable to be employed to analyze and evaluate living language in journalistic discourse with diverse topics and numerous audiences. In addition, events of Islamic States (IS) are drawing attention of politicians’ and scholars’ interest with various understandings and thoughts because their instability has affected international security. Therefore, quite a few articles are published daily to update Islamic states’ events.
Moreover, up to now, very few or even no research has been done to explore the evaluative language in news about Islamic States. Because of aforementioned conditions, in this research, I would like to utilize two famous channels CNN (an American channel) and CNA (an Asian channel) to compare the use of evaluative language in news about IS and to compare writers’ journalistic stances on these channels. Aims and objectives of the study 1. Aims of the study In this study, the writer aims at analyzing the evaluative language in news about Islamic States on CNN and CNA from November 30, 2014 to December 10, 2014 in the light of appraisal theory.
Objectives of the study The study focuses on two objectives. The first objective is to describe how evaluative language is realized in in news about Islamic States on CNN and CNA from November 30, 2014 to December 10, 2014 in the light of Appraisal theory. The second objective is to compare writers’ journalistic stances on CNN and writers’ journalistic stances on CNA hidden in their expressions. Research questions To reach aforementioned objectives, the study answers two research questions: - Question 1: How is evaluative language realized in news about Islamic States on CNN and CNA from November 30, 2014 to December 10, 2014? - Question 2: What are the similarities and differences between writers’ journalistic stances on CNN and writers’ journalistic stances on CNA about IS? 1.
Scope of the study As the title of the whole study, this paper places a strong focus on two issues. The first issue is to investigate the use of evaluative language in news about Islamic States on CNN and CNA from November 30, 2014 to December 10, 2014. Under the three systems of Appraisal Framework, attention will be mainly paid to the application of attitude, which also encompasses three categories: affect, judgment and appreciation which belong respectively to psychology and emotional world, ethics and human behavior and nonhuman behavior. Little attention will be paid to engagement and graduation in this article.
The writer chose news from these two channels because CNN and CNA are two famous channels of America and Singapore respectively. The writer hopes that news about IS released in these two channels will bring different nuances to the study. Besides, Islamic States’ events are momentous events that draw everyone’s attention in the world so news about Islamic States is always updated and unpredictable. Therefore, the writer just chose the news released for ten days from November 30, 2014 to December 10, 2014 with 10 and 10 articles on CNN and CNA respectively.
Methods of the study In the study, qualitative method is used with the instruments of content analysis and statistical analysis. Comparative method is also used to compare writers’ journalistic stances on CNN and writers’ journalistic stances on CNA. Besides, CoSchedule website is employed to analyze headlines. CoSchedule is a website that more than 10000 bloggers, editors, and social marketers trust to plan their blog, content, marketing, and social media.
PART B: RESEARCH CONTENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1. Appraisal theory The Appraisal theory has grown out of the functional perspective in linguistics. Functional grammar perceives language as having three meta-functions, namely, ideational, interpersonal and textual. The interpersonal meta-function is concerned with interaction between the addresser and addressee in the discourse situation and with the addresser’s attitude toward what he speaks or writes about.
Halliday (2004) pinpoints mood, modality and key as major exponents of interpersonal meaning. In his Introduction to Functional Grammar, he mentioned the existence of other means of realizing interpersonal meaning but even these cannot be exhaustive. By emphasizing the semantics of evaluation, the Appraisal theory has opened up a new area of interpersonal meanings. In this theory, Martin and White (2005) discuss how to use language to express emotion, ethics and aesthetic value.
Martin and White (2005) explain that the Appraisal theory is based on the notion of stance: “appraisal is probably most closely related to the concept of stance” (p. 40), which depends heavily on the idea that “whenever speakers (or writers) say anything, they encode their point of view towards it” (p. Besides, Appraisal framework is an approach which enables to explore, describe and explain “the way language is used to evaluate, to adopt stances, to construct textual personas and to manage interpersonal positionings and relationships” (White, 2005). By means of this approach it is possible to identify attitudes, judgments and emotive responses that are “explicitly presented in texts” as well as those which are “indirectly implied, presupposed or assumed” (White, 2005).