I STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I certify that the thesis “A Comparative Analysis of the Attitudinal Resources in English and Vietnamese Articles about Homosexuality” is my own work. This thesis contains no material published elsewhere or extracted in whole, or in part from a thesis by which I have qualified for or been awarded another degree or diploma except where reference is made in the text of the thesis. No other person’s work has been used without acknowledgement in the thesis. This thesis has not been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any other tertiary institution.
Quy Nhon, 2019 Phạm Thị Thanh Hường e II ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my deep indebtedness to all of my teachers, friends and family who have helped me throughout the time I conducted this thesis. I gratefully acknowledge my greatest thanks to my supervisor, Dr. Truong Van Dinh, who has given me helpful advice, invaluable guidance, and vital encouragement. Without his enthusiastic support, this thesis would not have been completed.
I am also grateful to Dr. Vo Duy Duc for his deep and interesting lectures and useful advice as well as all of the lecturers of this course for their valuable knowledge and foundation for this thesis. I would also like to express my special thanks to Quy Nhon University, Post-graduate Department, and Foreign Languages Department. Finally, I am particularly grateful to my mother, elder brother and sister, and friends, who have given me spiritual encouragement and helped me overcome a lot of difficulties during my study.
e III ABSTRACT This thesis aims at conducting a comparative study on Attitudinal resources in English and Vietnamese articles about Homosexuality. The study was carried out based on the Appraisal Theory developed by Martin and White (2005). The main purpose of this study was to point out the similarities and differences in terms of Attitudinal resources in both languages. The data for this paper consists of 20 articles (10 English articles and 10 Vietnamese ones) with the lengths varying from 800 to 2000 words.
The study is conducted through the use of quantitative, qualitative, analytic, synthetic, and descriptive methods. The analysis indicates that all of three categories of Attitudinal resources appear in both English and Vietnamese data, but with different proportions. In details, both English and Vietnamese writers have a tendency to employ more Judgement than the other two Attitudinal resources, which expresses that the writers often focus on evaluation of human behavior. Apart from similarities, the findings of this study also draw out some differences.
First, the frequency of occurrence of four subtypes of Affect between the two languages is not the same. Another difference is that the Vietnamese authors tend to use more negative and implicit resources of Judgement than the English native authors. In addition, the proportion of Reaction and Composition values in Vietnamese data is larger than that in English ones. From the results, it is hoped that the study will provide useful knowledge of evaluative language as well as some valuable contributions to linguistic theory.
e IV TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP .III TABLE OF CONTENTS. IV LIST OF TABLES. IX LIST OF FIGURES. Aims and objectives of the study.
Aims of the study. Objectives of the study. Significance of the study. Scope of the study.
Organization of the study. Systemic Functional Grammar and Interpersonal meaning. Overview of Appraisal Theory. Overview of homosexuality.
Definition of homosexuality. Classification of homosexuality. Previous studies on Appraisal Theory. Previous studies on Homosexuality.
METHODOLOGY AND PROCEDURES. Validity and Reliability. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS. The overall usage of the Attitudinal resources in EHAs and VHAs43 4.
Attitudinal resources used in EHAs and VHAs. Affect resources in EHAs and VHAs. Positive and Negative Affect. Authorial and Non-Authorial Affect in EHAs and VHAs.
Judgement in EHAs and VHAs. Social esteem and Social sanction. Positive and Negative Judgement. Explicit and Implicit Judgement.
Appreciation in EHAs and VHAs. The distribution of sub-types of Appreciation in EHAs and VHAs. Positive and Negative Appreciation. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS.
Suggestions for further research. 94 APPENDIX A – ADDRESSES OF THE VIETNAMESE TEXTS. 94 APPENDIX B – ADDRESSES OF THE ENGLISH TEXTS. 95 APPENDIX C – SAMPLE VIETNAMESE TEXT ANALYSIS.
96 APPENDIX D – SAMPLE ENGLISH TEXT ANALYSIS. 101 e VII ABBREVIATIONS (-) : Negative (+) : Positive Aff : Affect App : Appreciation Auth : Authorial Cap : Judgement: Capacity Comp : Appreciation: Composition E1-10 : English Homosexuality Articles from number 1 to 10 EHAs : English Homosexuality Articles Exp : Explicit Hap : Affect: Un/Happiness Imp : Implicit Inc : Affect: Dis/Inclination Judg : Judgement Non-Auth : Non-Authorial Norm : Judgement: Normality Prop : Judgement: Propriety Reac : Appreciation: Reaction Sat : Affect: Dis/Satisfaction Sec : Affect: In/Security SFG : Systemic Functional Grammar Ten : Judgement: Tenacity e VIII V1-10 : Vietnamese Homosexuality Articles from number 1 to 10 Val : Appreciation: Valuation Ver : Judgement: Veracity VHAs : Vietnamese Homosexuality Articles e IX LIST OF TABLES Table Page Title number number 2.1 Relations of Mood selection to Mood structure 9 2.2 The monoglossic and The heteroglossic 12 2.3 Sub-categories of Affect 21 2.4 Grammatical Realizations of Affect 22 2.5 Judgement-Social Esteem 25 2.6 Judgement-Social Sanction 26 2.7 Types of Appreciation 29 2.8 Sub-types of Appreciation 31 4.1 Frequency of Attotudinal resources in EHAs and 44 VHAs 4.2 The distribution of Affectual resources in EHAs and 47 VHAs 4.3 Positive and Negative Affect in EHAs and VHAs 56 4.4 Authorial and Non-Authorial Affect in EHAs and 58 VHAs 4.5 The detailed distribution of Social esteem and Social 63 sanction in EHAs and VHAs 4.6 The distribution of sub-types of Appreciation in EHAs 76 and VHAs e X LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page Title number number 2.1 Genre in Systemic Functional Linguistic 7 2.2 The outline of Appraisal theory 11 2.3 The engagement system 14 2.4 A preliminary outline of Graduation 15 2.5 Typology of Attitude subsystem 17 4.1 Sub-types of Attitude in the EHAs and VHAs 44 4.2 Sub-types of Affect in EHAs and VHAs 48 4.3 Positive and Negative Affect in the EHAs and VHAs 56 4.4 Authorial and Non-Authorial Affect in EHAs and VHAs 59 4.5 Types of Judgement is EHAs and VHAs 62 The detailed distribution of Social esteem and Social 4.6 64 sanction in EHAs and VHAs 4.7 Positive and Negative Judgement in EHAs and VHAs 69 The distribution of Explicit and Implicit Judgement in 4.8 72 EHAs and VHAs The distribution of sub-types of Appreciation in EHAs 4.10 Positive and Negative Appreciation in EHAs and VHAs 81 e 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION This chapter presents all the preliminaries of the thesis. It starts with the rationale, followed by the aims and objectives of the study, research questions, the significance of the study, the scope of the study. The organization of the research papers is presented as the last part of the study.
Rationale During the past few years, “homosexuality” has become the topic of an interdisciplinary specialization variously called gay and lesbian, LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) studies. Homosexuality is becoming more and more accepted, especially in some countries such as Canada, the USA, Spain, Belgium, Thailand. According to the Merriam- Webster Dictionary, homosexuality is defined as sexual attraction or the tendency to direct sexual desire toward another of the same sex. In other words, it is sexual contact between two persons of the same sex.
Nowadays, if someone works in entertainment, media, advertising, fashion, beauty, perhaps it is not too surprising to encounter perfect men or women who choose to love each other. However, for most people, LGBT or homosexuality is still a strange story. Homosexuality still remains to be one of the most controversial issues in the world today, especially in Vietnam. Therefore, the newspaper is one of the mass media to provide the most useful and incisive information to readers.
The articles play an important and pioneering role in eliminating the prejudices of society towards homosexuals. Giving honest, accurate and objective information about homosexual community in the media will help the community know and understand more about homosexuals as well as help them to have a peaceful life, study and contribute positively to build the social development. In these articles, the e 2 authors use a large number of evaluative languages of the opinion and attitude with the view of having positive impacts on readers. In order to achieve the purpose of conveying ideas to millions of readers around the world, the journalists or the writers need to use language to express their emotions or attitudes towards homosexuals, and thanks to this language resource to make the articles become more impressive and persuasive.
Therefore, the Appraisal theory developed by Martin and White (2005) is considered as a useful tool for analyzing the texts in terms of attitudinal aspects of the writers. Appraisal is still a new and ideal land for researchers to explore and investigate. In modern life, with looking forward to having a partial glimpse of homosexuality, many researchers have conducted studies of homosexual issues in different aspects of linguistics. Among those are the studies by Barringer (2011) on “Religious Women and Homosexuality: A Denominational Breakdown”.
Another study was conducted by Ha (2013) on public perceptions on LGBT issues in modern Vietnam or Mai (2016) with “Constructing the Vietnamese Queer Identities: A Hierarchy of Class, Gender, and Sexuality”. In fact, many researchers have conducted studies of homosexual issues in different aspects of linguistics. However, little research has been done in the homosexual articles in the light of the Appraisal theory of attitudinal resources. I decided to conduct a study entitled “A Comparative Analysis of the Attitudinal Resources in English and Vietnamese Articles about Homosexuality”.
I hope that the study will provide some useful knowledge of homosexuality or LGBT as well as knowledge of using sub-types of e 3 Attitudes for Vietnamese leaners and teachers of English and for those interested in Appraisal theory. Aims and objectives of the study 1. Aims of the study The study aims to investigate the attitudinal resources used in English and Vietnamese articles about homosexuality in the light of appraisal theory. In addition, this study is carried out to find out the similarities and differences of attitudinal values about homosexuality in the two languages.
Objectives of the study The objectives of the study are: - To investigate sub-types of Attitude, including Affect, Judgement, and Appreciation, in English and Vietnamese articles about homosexuality; - To find out the frequency of occurrence of these attitudinal resources; - To draw out the similarities and differences of these attitudinal resources in English and Vietnamese articles about homosexuality - To put forward some implications for teaching and learning in practical language skills. Research questions To achieve the aims and objectives of the study, the following research questions are raised: 1. What types of attitudinal resources are used in English and Vietnamese articles about homosexuality? 2. What is the frequency of their occurrence of these attitudinal resources? 3.
What are the similarities and differences in English and Vietnamese articles about homosexuality in terms of attitudinal resources? e 4 1. Significance of the study The results of the study will bring out values and contribution to readers in both theories and practices. Theoretically, this paper will offer a foundation for further researches to be done in the light of the Appraisal theory. Besides, it is a valuable significance for readers who are interested in linguistic theory and evaluative language usage.
Practically, the findings of the study will help learners of English can know how to use Attitudinal resources effectively in expressing attitude as well as making persuasive writings. From a pedagogical perspective, it has significant contributions for Vietnamese teachers and learners in the process of teachings and learning writing and reading skills.