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MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING UNIVERSITY OF DANANG LÊ THỊ VÂN HỒNG AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE SUB-CATEGORIES OF “ATTITUDE” IN THE BOOK THE WORLD IS FLAT BY THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF APPRAISAL THEORY MASTER THESIS IN SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES Danang, 2015 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING UNIVERSITY OF DANANG LÊ THỊ VÂN HỒNG AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE SUB-CATEGORIES OF “ATTITUDE” IN THE BOOK THE WORLD IS FLAT BY THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF APPRAISAL THEORY FIELD: THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE CODE: 60.22.02.01 MASTER THESIS IN SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES Supervisor: NGUYỄN THỊ QUỲNH HOA, Ph. D. Danang, 2015 i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I hereby certify this thesis “An Investigation into the Sub-categories of “Attitude” in the book The World Is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman from the Perspective of Appraisal Theory” is my own work. No other person’s work has been used without the acknowledgement in the thesis. This paper has not been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any other tertiary institution. Danang, 2015 Lê Thị Vân Hồng ii ABSTRACT The present study explores sub-categories of Attitude -Affect, Judgement and Appreciation- in the book “The World is Flat” by Thomas L. Friedman in the light of Appraisal Theory. The study aims to investigate the syntactic and semantic realizations of Attitude sub-categories from 358 samples collected from the book. The thesis employed the descriptive method to fully describe the realizations of Attitude sub-categories in terms of syntax and semantics to obtain the setting goals. The finding of the research demonstrate that Attitude sub-categories can be recognized in various group and phrase structures in which nominal groups and adjective groups are more favourable. The study also works out typical functions of Attitude sub-categories as components in transitivity processes. Semantically, the findings show that all Appraisal evaluating criteria were reflected in the book and significantly the positive values are dominant. This is the interpersonal meaning which the book contributes to nurture its readers’ insights to the reality of the world in the era of digital technology. The study makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the sub-categories of Attitude in the book and provides the teachers and university students majoring in English with practical implication to evaluate a discourse fragment and interpret a discourse fragment in the light of Appraisal Theory and in line with Systemic Functional Linguistics. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP.................................................................i ABSTRACT.....................................................................................................ii TABLE OF CONTENTS...............................................................................iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS.........................................................................v LIST OF TABLES..........................................................................................vi LIST OF FIGURES......................................................................................vii CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION..................................................................1 1.1. RATIONALE.............................................................................................1 1.2. DEFINITIONS OF TERMS.......................................................................4 1.3. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES........................................................................5 1.3.1. Aims of the Study............................................................................5 1.3.2. Objectives of the Study....................................................................5 1.4. RESEARCH QUESTIONS........................................................................5 1.5. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY...........................................................6 1.6. SCOPE OF THE STUDY..........................................................................6 1.7. ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY.........................................................6 CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND....................................................................8 2.1. PREVIOUS STUDIES...............................................................................8 2.2. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND.........................................................12 2.2.1. Systemic Functional Linguistics....................................................12 2.2.2. Appraisal Theory...........................................................................15 2.2.3. Attitude as a Category Encoding Attitudinal Meaning..................18 2.2.4. Syntactic Realizations of Attitude - Experimental Elements of Clause as Representation.................................................................................28 iv 2.2.5. Structures of Word Groups and Phrases........................................33 2.3. SUMMARY.............................................................................................39 CHAPTER 3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY........................................40 3.1. RESEARCH DESIGN.............................................................................40 3.2. RESEARCH METHODS.........................................................................40 3.3. DATA COLLECTION..............................................................................40 3.4. DATA ANALYSIS....................................................................................41 3.5. RESEARCH PROCEDURE....................................................................42 3.6. RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY............................................................42 CHAPTER 4. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION..........................................43 4.1. SYNTACTIC REALIZATIONS OF ATTITUDE SUB-CATEGORIES. 43 4.1.1. Syntactic Realizations of Affect..................................................43 4.1.2. Syntactic Realizations of Judgement.........................................60 4.1.3. Syntactic Realizations of Appreciation......................................71 4.2. SEMANTIC FEATURES OF ATTITUDE RESOURCES IN THE BOOK “THE WORLD IS FLAT” IN VIEW OF APPRAISAL................................88 4.2.1. Semantic Features of Affect Markers............................................88 4.2.2. Semantic Features of Judgement Markers.....................................93 4.2.3. Semantic Features of Appreciation Markers............................96 4.3. SUMMARY...........................................................................................103 CHAPTER 5. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS.........................105 5.1. CONCLUSIONS...................................................................................105 5.2. IMPLICATIONS..................................................................................106 5.2.1. To the Teachers............................................................................106 5.2.2. To the Learners..........................................................................107 5.3. LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY..........................................................108 5.4. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH...................................108 REFERENCES............................................................................................110 QUYẾT ĐỊNH GIAO ĐỀ TÀI (Bản sao) v LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS TWF SFL SFG (-) (+) Ri Rq The World Is Flat Systemic Functional Linguistic Systemic Functional Grammar Negative attitude Positive attitude Appreciation: reaction-impact Appreciation: reaction-quality LIST OF TABLES vi No 2.1. 2.2. 2.3. 2.4. 2.5. 4.1. 4.2. 4.3. Names of Tables Judgement - Social Esteem Judgement - Social Sanction Types of Appreciation Typical functions of group and phrase classes The principle categories of ‘relational’ clause Summary structures of Affect adverbial groups Summary structures of Appreciation adjectival groups Summary of group and phrase structures of Attitude sub- 4.4. categories Distribution of group and phrase structures in Attitude sub- categories 4.5. Un/happiness realizations of Affect 4.6. Dis/satisfaction realizations of Affect 4.7. In/security realizations of Affect 4.8. In/security realizations of Affect 4.9. Occurrence frequencies of Affect semantic values 4.10. Occurrence frequencies of Judgement semantic values 4.11. Occurrence frequencies of Appreciation semantic values 4.12. Summary of semantic realizations of Attitude sub-categories Page 21 22 24 29 31 59 83 85 87 89 90 91 92 93 96 100 101 vii LIST OF FIGURES No 2.1. 2.1. 2.2. 2.3. 2.4. 2.5. 2.6. 2.7. 2.8. 2.9. 2.10. 2.11. 2.12. 2.13. 2.16. 4.1. Names of Figures An overview of Appraisal resources Judgement and Appreciation as institutionalized affect Language strata Components of a process Material process in active and passive clause Illustration of mental processes Behavioural processes Verbal processes Existential processes Experiential structure of a nominal group Qualifier in nominal group Nominal group, showing multivariate structure Experiential structure of the verbal group Verbal group with marked polarity and contrastive tense Adjectival group Affect verbal groups as Process in desiderative mental Page 16 26 28 30 30 31 32 32 33 34 35 36 36 37 38 46 4.2. 4.3. 4.3. 4.4. process Affect verbal groups as Process in Emotive Mental process Affect verbal groups as Process in passive Material process Summary structures of Affect nominal groups Affect nominal groups as Possessed in Possessive relational 47 47 50 51 4.5. 4.6. 4.7. 4.8. 4.9. process Affect nominal groups as Goal in Material process Affect nominal groups as Existent in Existential process Affect nominal groups as Attributor in Existential process Summary structures of Affect adjectival groups Affect adjectival groups as Attributes in Attributive 52 52 53 57 58 4.11. relational processes Affect prepositional phrases as Attributes in Attributive 60 4.12. 4.13. 4.14. 4.15. relational processes Judgement via simple nominal groups Judgement via complex nominal groups Judgement nominal groups in Relational process Judgement nominal groups in marked Relational process 62 63 64 65 viii 4.16. Judgement nominal groups in Possessive relational 66 processes 4.17. Judgement nominal groups in Material processes . 4.18. Judgement adjectival groups as Attributes in Attributive 66 69 relational processes 4.19. Judgement adjectival groups as Attributes in Attributive 70 relational processes with Anticipatory “It” 4.20. Judgement adverbial groups as Circumctance in material 70 process 4.21. Judgement prepositional phrases as Circumctance in 71 material process 4.22. Appreciation nominal group: Deictic + Thing 4.23. Appreciation nominal group: Deictic + Thing+ Post- 73 74 modifier 4.24. Appreciation nominal group: Deictic + Pre-modifier 77 +Thing 4.25. Appreciation nominal group: Deictic + Pre-modifier 78 +Thing+ Post-modifier 4.26. Apprepriation nominal clauses as Identifier in Relational 79 process 4.27. Appreciation nominal clauses as Identifier in Existential 79 process 4.28. Apprepriate nominal clauses as Goal in Material process 4.29. The occurrence frequencies of Attitude sub-categories 80 86 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1. RATIONALE In the current era of information and technology explosion, geographical distances and hierarchical grades between nations seem not to be the matter. This results from the integration and globalization in every aspect of social life such as economy, politics, culture, education, etc. The globalization process is happening drastically and may be advancing at a faster rate than ever before. Globalization itself brings about opportunities as well as challenges. Many countries, governmental organizations and individuals can take advantage of a wide variety of opportunities opened by the worldwide advance of science, technology to facilitate their prosperity and development. The digital-technology advance has made the face of the world change a lot. A new world where the worldwide cooperative relationships are fostered has been being nurtured. In this situation, every country, even the most developed one, is facing plenty of competitive challenges which require necessary knowledge about the times to adapt well to modern life. Fortunately, one of the most successful books about the trend of integration and globalization, “The World Is Flat” (hereafter TWF), has been introduced to the readers as a useful source of reference. The book was written by Friedman, T.L., a New York Times columnist, and first published in 2005 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux Publishing House. It describes the relationship between countries, communities, organizations and individuals in the age of information and technology advance. The world is metaphorically implied flat because different aspects of social life in the world have been happening in more equal relationships. The world is flattening in terms of geography, 2 economy, politics, etc. People in different spheres are no longer in the curve of the earth because they can see each other in the cyber world. Economically competitive relationships are being replaced by the cooperative ones. Developing nations, medium and small enterprises or even people in lower social statuses have emerged to become the partners of the other ranks. Even political barriers have been gradually broken down. Digital technology is being fully employed and it brings opportunities to change the world. Consisting mainly of personal observations and anecdotes, the nonfiction book TWF ingeniously explains how the flattening of the world happened at the dawn of the twenty-first century. By means of amusing stories about big corporations and enterprises such as Wal-Mart, UPS, Dell, JetBlue and many others related to his basic theme, the author introduced ten flatteners - factors that change the situation of the world such as outsourcing, offshoring, and “supply chaining”. Also, he wrote about two key trends: the adoption of more collaborative business processes and the addition of three billion Chinese and Indian consumers to the global marketplace. It is by this “triple convergence” that he shows the flattening of the world over the last decades and the changes in international cooperation and integration. It provides beneficial update information of the real situation of the world in globalization and integration process. The newest edition of TWF was published in August, 2007 by Picador Publishing House. In this new edition, Friedman, T.L. included fresh stories and insights to help us understand the flattening of the world. He added two new chapters on how to be activist and social entrepreneur in a flat world and how to manage our reputations and privacy in a world where we are all becoming publishers and public figures. In the book, Friedman, T.L. demystified the brave new world in the phase 3 of globalization. He helped the readers to make sense of the often bewildering global scene unfolding before their eyes with his inimitable ability to turn complex foreign policy and economic issues into more simple ones. He exposed his profound and deeply important insights about the phenomenon in the global context which to some extent help to make the public conceptual shift about the reality of the world. The book opened a new door for countries, companies, communities, and individuals to come into a new domain and suggested the way governments and societies can and must adapt to achieve their goals. With such significant contributions, the book was awarded the inaugural Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award in 2005. It also became one of the international best-selling books in the years 2005 and 2006. In The New York Times reviewing The World Is Flat in 2005, the Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz remarked "One mark of a great book is that it makes you see things in a new way, and Mr. Friedman certainly succeeds in that goal". In recent years, researching linguistic objectives in the framework of Appraisal Theory proposed by Martin and his colleagues has becoming more and more popular. To linguistic disciplines such as discourse analysis, applied linguistics and other related fields, this new linguistic theory contributes an approach to examine how speakers or writers express their opinions for things and ideas. The theory which develop the model of personal meaning within the paradigms of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) helps to further explore the interpersonal meaning of language in the scope of discourse as well as rhetoric and communicative effects by judging the speakers’/writers’ stance and their communication messages in the relation to the hearers/readers, Appraisal theory addresses not only the means by which 4 speakers/writers overtly encode what they present as their own attitudes but also the means by which they more indirectly activate evaluative stance and position the readers/listeners to supply their own assessments. These evaluations reveal both speakers’/writers’ feelings and their status or authority as construed by the text [22, p.2]. Therefore, this is a potential approach to discover the attitude, the evaluation as well as the personal meaning a speaker implies in his words. With a non-fiction book like TWF where the stance and authority of the author are revealed, this approach is applicable. A desire to have further insights into what Attitudinal linguistic devices are realized in the book, how they convey the author’s viewpoints and construe the interpersonal meaning has inspired us to develop the research entitled “An Investigation into the Sub-categories of “Attitude” in the book The World Is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman from the Perspective of Appraisal Theory” 1.2. DEFINITIONS OF TERMS - Appraisal Theory is defined as an elaborate system is developed from the overarching framework of systemic functional linguistics by Martin and White [22]. It refers to the grammatical and lexical resources for expressing evaluation. The theory is concerned with how text producers construe particular authorial identities for themselves, how authors align/disalign themselves with actual or potential respondents and how writers or speakers construct an ideal audience for their texts. - Attitude refers to a domain of Appraisal which is concerned with our feelings including emotional reactions, judgement of behaviour and evaluation of things. It is divided into three regions of feeling namely Affect, Judgement, Appreciation. 5 - Affect is an emotive dimension of Attitude which is concerned with positive and negative feelings. - Judgement deals with attitudes toward people and the way they behave which we admire, criticize, praise or condemn. - Appreciation involves evaluations of semiotic and natural phenomena according to the ways in which they are valued or not in a given field. 1.3. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES 1.3.1. Aims of the Study The study primarily aims at investigating the syntactic and semantic realizations of the three sub-categories of Attitude namely Affect, Judgement, and Appreciation in the book TWF. The findings of the study, then, will probably help the teachers and university students majoring in English increase their knowledge about how to evaluate a discourse and to some extent enable them to interpret a discourse in light of Appraisal Theory. 1.3.2. Objectives of the Study The study is intended to: - To identify the different sub-categories of Attitude used in the book TWF. - To recognize the syntactic and semantic realizations of Attitude sub-types. - To realize the occurrence frequencies of each type. - To offer some implications in teaching and learning sub-categories of Attitude in English. 1.4. RESEARCH QUESTIONS The study attempted to answer the following research questions: 1. What are the syntactic realizations of Affect, Judgement and Appreciation as the sub-categories of Attitude in TWF? 2. What are the semantic realizations of the above mentioned subcategories of Attitude in TWF? 1.5. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY 6 As a new theory developed within the paradigms of SFL, Appraisal Theory helps to provide an analytical tool for linguistic researchers to better understand the issues associated with evaluative linguistic devices and the negotiation of intersubjective positions, and opens a new area of interpersonal meaning. The thesis, which is an application of this theory to linguistic research, presents an exploration of syntactic and semantic realizations of Affect, Judgment and Appreciation as Attitude sub-categories in the book TWF. The study is hoped to make a certain contribution to both linguistics and pedagogy domains. In the aspect of linguistics, the paper may add to a comprehensive understanding of attitude linguistic devices included in the book. Also, the result of the research is expected to dedicate to our understanding of language development. Pedagogically, it is hoped that the thesis can be a source of reference for those who teach and study English in higher education institutes. 1.6. SCOPE OF THE STUDY Appraisal Theory with three categories of Attitude, Engagement and Graduation 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 positioning and relationships. Therefore, the theory may be potentially employed to study a wide range of aspects such as linguistic features, application of the theory in teaching and learning English. However, the thesis is limited in the study of syntactic and semantic realizations of the three Attitude sub-categories Affect, Judgement and Appreciation appearing in the book TWF. 1.7. ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY The study is organized into five chapters as followed: Chapter 1: Introduction 7 This chapter presents the rationale, the aims and objectives, the scope, the research questions, the signification as well as the organization of the study. Chapter 2: Literature Review and Theoretical Background This chapter consists of two parts. The first one is a review of previous studies relating to the investigated problem. The second is concerned with theoretical knowledge related to issues under study. Chapter 3: Research Methodology This chapter presents research design, research methodology, data collection, data analysis and research procedure. It also includes the reliability and validity of the thesis. Chapter 4: Findings and Discussion This chapter is concerned with the work of discovering realizations of sub-categories of Attitude in “The World Is Flat” in terms of syntax and semantics. Also, the occurrence frequencies of each sub-type are drawn out. Chapter 5: Conclusions and Implications This chapter presents the conclusions and a summary of major findings, the implications of the study results in teaching and learning English in Vietnam, the limitations of the study and some suggestions for further research related to the study. CHAPTER 2 8 LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 2.1. PREVIOUS STUDIES Appraisal Theory came into being at the beginning of the 1990s and has become popular ever since. It was initiated by James Martin, the leader of Sydney systemic functional linguistics school, and Peter White, a journalist who got interested in SFL. They set the foundation to a new linguistic area by extending Halliday’s SFL in terms of the interpersonal meaning, one of the three megafunctions of language [10]. Significantly, it has provided an approach examine the lexical realizations to judge human behaviour, appreciate the value of things as well as recognize the position of an author in his linguistic products. The theory is fully presented in one of their typical works: The Language of Evaluation- Appraisal in English, published in 2005 by Palgrave MacMilan. The major concerns of Appraisal Theory include how writers or speakers express their stance toward the things or ongoing events in the world, how they express their agreement or disagreement with the potential responses form the other readers, and how they establish and strengthen their identities in a text or a discourse. The function practiced by appraisal items in a discourse is to help writers or speakers to express their evaluation, negotiate their relationship with the respondents, and establish their persona. Appraisal Theory also provides a new approach which operates the evaluation in a somehow different way from other modals existing before which mainly dealt with evaluation in relation to propositions and narratives by Ocha & Schiefflen 1989, Biber& Finnegan 1989, Bybee & Fleischman 1995, Conrad & Biber 2000, Hunston & Thompson 2000a [22, p.38]. With Appraisal Theory, we move to a range of other educationally significant genre 9 and casual conversation. Most importantly, within the general framework of SFL, the theory helps to prove an approach to deal with evaluation was developed in the context of the rich developing descriptions of phonology/graphology and signing, lexicogrammar, discourse semantics, register and genre and multimodality. [22, p.40] Up to now, Appraisal Theory has attracted much attention of many wellknown English scholars. A variety of studies have been conducted in various fields, some of the most typical of which are Talking with readers: MetaDiscourse as Rhetorical Act by Crismore [3], Evaluation in Texts: Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse by Hunston and Thompson [13] The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English by Martin and White [22], and Working with Discourse: Meaning Beyond the Clause by Martin and Rose [21] etc.. A large number of articles were published to propose, discuss and clarify the matters within the domain of Appraisal, including Beyond exchange: Appraisal system in English by Martin [20], Beyond modality and Hedging: a dialogic view of the language of intersubjective stance by White [32], Stance and Engagement: a model of instruction in academic discourse by Hyland [14], Annotating Expressions of Appraisal in English by Read et al [29], etc. These publications focus on a certain areas of Appraisal such as metadiscourse, stance, evaluation, and basic concepts of the theory and they provide us an overall picture about the theoretical background of Appraisal in use. Since the Appraisal Theory was developed from Systemic Functional Linguistic by Martin and White, it has been adopted as a new approach to linguistic study and the Appraisal framework has been applied to other areas. In the doctoral dissertation named “Construction of Evaluative Measuring in IELTS Writing: an Intersubjective and Intertextual Perspective”, Nakamura 10 [25] applied the framework of Appraisal as a theory of language as a social system for making meaning to study evaluative interpersonal meaning writings by IELTS candidates via the Appraisal resources used in the texts. In Appraisal in Online Discussions of Literature Texts, Love [18] investigated Australian students’ online response to the teacher about a postmodernist narrative in the Appraisal framework. The study shows the value of Appraisal analysis as a diagnostic tool in art curriculum and cultural contexts. Liu [17] implied the Appraisal Theory in her reading teaching for college students in An Application of Appraisal Theory to Teaching College Reading in China. The results showed that teaching reading in Appraisal approach is an important strategy which helps develop students’ critical ability and supply teachers with a new perspective to teach reading. Furthermore, a variety of studies which was conducted in the light of Appraisal mainly focused on media discourses. Juana and Begona [16] explored the engagement patterns in journalistic commentary and news in English and Spanish in terms of writer stance and the dimension of (inter)subjectivity in “Evaluation and Engagement in Journalistic Commentary and News Reportage”. The presence and patterning of various linguistic resources and the comparison across languages are results of the study. In “Exploring the Dialogism of Academic Discourse: Heteroglossic Engagement in Medical Research Articles” Fryer [6] indicated a variety of Engagement resources used the articles and their distributions both across and within different sections of the articles. Also, studies on sub-categories of Attitude are in favour of media discourses. In “Attitudinal Analysis of VOA and BBC News Report in the Light of Appraisal Theory”, Wang [31] analyzed the attitudinal meaning of radio news report in VOA and BBC using the Appraisal system with a view to
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