Attitudinal resources in english and vietnamese movie reviews of pixars movies an appraisal study

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING QUY NHON UNIVERSITY TRẦN XUÂN BẢO TRÂN ATTITUDINAL RESOURCES IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE MOVIE REVIEWS OF PIXAR’S MOVIES: AN APPRAISAL STUDY Field: English Linguistics Code: 22 02 01 Supervisor: VÕ DUY ĐỨC, Ph.D BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO TRƢỜNG ĐẠI HỌC QUY NHƠN TRẦN XUÂN BẢO TRÂN PHÂN TÍCH NGUỒN NGỮ LIỆU THÁI ĐỘ TRONG CÁC BÀI ĐÁNH GIÁ PHIM PIXAR TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT Chuyên ngành: Ngôn Ngữ Anh Code: 22 02 01 Ngƣời hƣớng dẫn: TS VÕ DUY ĐỨC i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I declare that this thesis titled “Attitudinal resources in English and Vietnamese movie reviews of Pixar‟s movies: An Appraisal study” is absolutely my original work This thesis contains no material published elsewhere or extracted in whole, or in part of 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 To the best of my knowledge and belief, I have not used any sources other than those listed in the bibliography and identified as references This thesis does not incorporate with any material previously submitted for a degree or diploma in any university without acknowledgment Quy Nhon, August 2021 Trần Xuân Bảo Trân ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I gratefully acknowledge my deep appreciation to all of my teachers who have provided me with useful and interesting lectures, their precious works, materials and knowledge as well as invaluable consultation, which have helped me to lay the foundation for this thesis In particular, I would like to express my sincere thanks to Dr Vo Duy Duc, my supervisor and my teacher Without his enthusiastic guidance, helpful advice, and enormous encouragement, this thesis would have been far from being accomplished I also give special thanks to all of my classmates, M.A students of English course 22nd at the Quy Nhon University who gave me their help during the time I studied and conducted my thesis Finally, with my heart, I can say that I owe my debt to my parents, who gave their unconditioned love and never-ended encouragement which is extremely significant for me to overcome a lot of troubles during the course and the study of this thesis iii ABSTRACT This study employed Appraisal Theory in a contrastive analysis of Attitudinal resources in English and Vietnamese movie reviews of Pixar‟s movies The data consists of 40 reviews of movies (Inside Out, The Good Dinosaur, Finding Dory, Cars 3, Coco, Incredibles 2, Toy Story 4, Onward, Soul) which were produced from 2015 to 2020, collected randomly from reliable online resources The overall purpose was to find out the similarities and differences between the two languages in terms of Attitudinal resources namely Affect, Judgement and Appreciation The study was carried out through the adoption of quantitative, qualitative approaches and the use of analytic, synthetic and descriptive methods The results indicate that the three categories of Attitudinal resources all appear in both English and Vietnamese movie reviews It was found that both languages tend to use more Appreciation than the other two Attitudinal resources Similarly, the writers in the two languages tend to concern more on expressing the characters‟ feelings in the movies as well as the audiences‟ emotions Also, the English and Vietnamese reviewers incline to evaluate human behavior explicitly via lexical items containing judgement Besides, the tendency towards the use of positive assessment dominates negative assessment in EMRs and VMRs In spite of these similarities between the two languages, a number of differences were observed Hopefully, the results of the study will offer the readers knowledge of evaluative language related to teaching and learning English iv TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv ABBREVIATIONS vi LIST OF TABLES vii LIST OF FIGURES viii CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale 1.2 Aims and Objectives 1.2.1 Aims 1.2.2 Objectives 1.3 Research questions 1.4 Scope of the study 1.5 Significance of the study 1.6 Organization of the study CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Appraisal Theory 2.1.1 Attitude 2.1.2 Engagement 17 2.1.3 Graduation 19 2.2 Related studies 20 2.3 Movie reviews 24 2.4 Summary 25 CHAPTER METHODOLOGY AND PROCEDURE 26 3.1 Research design 26 v 3.2 Data collection 27 3.3 Data analysis 28 3.4 Reliability and validity 30 3.5 Procedures 30 3.6 Summary 31 CHAPTER FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 32 4.1 Overview of Attitude sub-types in EMRs and VMRs 32 4.2 Attitudinal resources used in EMRs and VMRs 36 4.2.1 Affect 36 4.2.2 Judgement 52 4.2.3 Appreciation 66 4.3 Summary 78 CHAPTER CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 79 5.1 Conclusions 79 5.2 Implications 83 5.3 Limitations 84 5.4 Suggestions for further research 85 REFERENCE 86 vi ABBREVIATIONS Aff : Affect App : Appreciation Auth : Authorial Cap : Judgement: Capacity Comp : Appreciation: Composition Judg : Judgement EMRs : English movie reviews Exp : Explicit Hap : Affect: Un/Happiness Imp : Implicit Inc : Affect: Dis/Inclination Non- Auth : Non- Authorial Norm : Judgement: Normality Prop : Judgement: Propriety Reac : Appreciation: Reaction Sat : Affect: Satisfaction Sec : Affect: In/Security Ten : Judgement: Tenacity Val : Valuation Ver : Judgement: Veracity VMRs : Vietnamese movie reviews (-) : Negative (+) : Positive vii LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1 Judgement-Social Esteem 12 Table 2.2 Judgement-Social Sanction 13 Table 2.3 Types of Appreciation 16 Table 4.1 Frequency of Attitudinal resources in EMRs and VMRs 33 Table 4.2 The distribution of Affectual resources in EMRs and VMRs 37 Table 4.3 Positive and Negative Affect in EMRs and VMRs 45 Table 4.4 Authorial and Non-Authorial Affect in EMRs and VMRs 48 Table 4.5 Types of Judgement in EMRs and VMRs 52 Table 4.6 The detailed distribution of Social Esteem and Social Sanction in EMRs and VMRs 54 Table 4.7 Positive and Negative Judgement in EMRs and VMRs 60 Table 4.8 Explicit and Implicit Judgement in EMRs and VMRs 63 Table 4.9 The distribution of Reaction, Composition and Valuation in EMRs and VMRs 67 Table 4.10 Positive and Negative Appreciation in EMRs and VMRs 72 Table 4.11 Explicit and Implicit Appreciation in EMRs and VMRs 75 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1 Appraisal framework (Martin & White, 2005, p 38) Figure 2.2 Review of Attitude Subsystems (Martin & White, 2005, p 42) Figure 2.3 The Engagement system (Martin & White, 2005, p.134) 18 Figure 2.4 A preliminary outline of Graduation 20 Figure 4.1 Sub-types of Attitude in the EMRs and VMRs 34 Figure 4.2 Sub-types of Affect in EMRs and VMRs 38 Figure 4.3 Positive and Negative Affect in EMRs and VMRs 45 Figure 4.4 Authorial and Non-Authorial Affect in EMRs and VMRs 48 Figure 4.5 Types of Judgement in EMRs and VMRs 53 Figure 4.6 The detailed distribution of Social Esteem and Social Sanction in EMRs and VMRs 54 Figure 4.7 Positive and Negative Judgement in EMRs and VMRs 60 Figure 4.8 Explicit and Implicit Judgement in EMRs and VMRs 63 Figure 4.9 The distribution of Reaction, Composition and Valuation in EMRs and VMRs 68 Figure 4.10 Positive and Negative Appreciation in EMRs and VMRs 73 Figure 4.11 Explicit and Implicit Appreciation in EMRs and VMRs 75 73 EMRs VMRs 18.2 24.5 75.5 81.8 Positive Negative Positive Negative Figure 4.10 Positive and Negative Appreciation in EMRs and VMRs The findings indicate that there is a similarity between the two languages with respect to the favored use of positive resources In EMRs, there is a strikingly high rate of positive Appreciation resources with 81.8% Similarly, the proportion of positive Appreciation resources in VMRs is significantly high (75.5%) These statistics show that positive instances of Appreciation in both languages are much more dominant than negative ones It seems that the writers from the two countries possibly avoid using negative words in the evaluation of the movies for the reason that they want to provide readers with an attractive, pleasant and impressive feeling about the movies Below are some examples of positive and negative Appreciation resources in EMRs and VMRs (4.69) Coco is one of Pixar's all-time greats [+App], a marvelous [+App] achievement worth experiencing [+App] with your whole family With eye-popping [+App] visual spectacle and full of music that makes you want to sing along and dance, it's a story that will warm your soul and leave you laughing, crying, and hugging your family close 74 (4.70) The story, however, feels chaotic [-App] in stretches, and fleetingly hard to follow [-App] while laying down its elaborate [-App] rules after Miguel crosses over (4.71) Sẽ khơng nói nhận xét Soul phim đáng xem [+App] năm 2020 Bởi khơng mang tính chất động viên mà cịn có tác dụng vị thuốc chữa lành [+App] Tổng thể phim trì tốt [+App] âm hưởng feel-good (dễ chịu) sở trường Disney miếng hài duyên dáng [+App], nét vẽ tinh nghịch đầy sống động [+App] (4.72) Tuy nhiên, hành trình Joe 22 Soul dễ đoán [-App] Cuộc phiêu lưu hai có nhiều thách thức bất ngờ nội dung vào lối mòn [-App] As we can see from Instance 4.69 and 4.71, all of the English and Vietnamese Appreciation items “all-time greats”, “marvelous”, “eyepoping”, “đáng xem nhất”, “một vị thuốc chữa lành”, “tốt”, “duyên dáng”, “đầy sống động” are positive Particularly, the reviewers of both languages give a general evaluation of the movie in terms of values, visuals and music On the other hand, the reviewers from the two countries also employ negative Appreciation values in their reviews In detail, the items such as “chaotic”, “hard to follow” and “elaborate” in Instance 4.70 are used to assess the story of the movie which is so complicated that children will find it very difficult to fully understand Moreover, in Example 4.72, the negative values “khá dễ đoán” and “đi vào lối mòn” are utilized to evaluate the movie‟s plot which is predictable and uncreative In short, the writers of both EMRs and VMRs tend to use positive resources of Appreciation A possible explanation for this might be that the writers want to impress readers by using positive Appreciation values as a 75 compliment on the movies The Appreciation resources in the reviews are used to evaluate the impact, the quality, the balance, the complexity or the worthiness of things, performances, aesthetic forms, state of affairs or happenings in the movies 4.2.3.3 Explicit and Implicit Appreciation Similar to judging people‟s behavior, evaluating inanimate things can be explicit or implicit In EMRs and VMRs, both Explicit and Implicit Appreciation can be found The following table shows the distribution of Explicit and Implicit Appreciation in both languages Table 4.11 Explicit and Implicit Appreciation in EMRs and VMRs Types of EMRs VMRs Appreciation Instances Percentage Instances Percentage Explicit 461 95.4% 533 96.8% Implicit 23 4.6% 18 3.2% Total 484 100% 551 100% The statistics above are graphically illustrated in the charts below: 4.6 EMRs 95.4 3.2 VMRs 96.8 20 40 60 Implicit 80 100 Explicit Figure 4.11 Explicit and Implicit Appreciation in EMRs and VMRs 120 76 As shown in the figure above, the proportion of Explicit Appreciation resources in both EMRs and VMRs is much higher than that of implicit Appreciation resources Particularly, in EMRs, 95.4% of Appreciation resources with 461 instances found are Explicit Appreciation meanwhile 4.6% of those with 23 instances are implicitly expressed in EMRs In VMRs, the percentage of Explicit items is much greater than that of Implicit ones (96.8% versus 3.2%) The result reveals that the English reviewers and Vietnamese ones want to give readers clear viewpoints about the movies Below are some examples of Explicit and Implicit Appreciation resources in EMRs and VMRs (4.73) Toy Story is visually glorious and uproariously funny [AppExp] Honestly, I missed maybe 25% of the (narratively inessential) dialogue due to audience laughter [App- Imp] (4.74) Phim mang góc nhìn hài hước [App- Exp], vui nhộn [AppExp], giới thiệu giới viễn tưởng đa màu sắc [App- Exp] với linh hồn kiếm tìm mục tiêu sống thân (4.75) Tóm lại, Soul tác phẩm hoạt hình đột phá [App- Exp] tư duy, xuất sắc [App- Exp] cách thể mắt thời điểm Đây phim bỏ lỡ [App- Imp] mùa Giáng sinh năm It is obvious that the reviewer in the English extract uses both Explicit and Implicit Appreciation values in his/her review Particularly, the writer wants to directly express his/her impressions of the movie by using the phrase “visually glorious and uproariously funny” On the other hand, the whole sentence “Honestly, I missed maybe 25% of the (narratively inessential) dialogue due to audience laughter” is an indirect emphasis of the writer that the movie contains a lot of humorous moments Similar to the English 77 counterparts, Vietnamese reviewers also employ Explicit as well as Implicit Appreciation items in the reviews In detail, the writers employ the lexis of Explicit Appreciation such as “hài hƣớc”, “vui nhộn”, “đa màu sắc”, “đột phá”, “xuất sắc” to positively evaluate the movie‟s different aspects so that when readers see these items, they will find this film worth seeing Moreover, the reviewer utilizes the phrase “không thể bỏ lỡ” to express Implicit value of Appreciation that this is a must-watch movie The possible purpose of this application might be to have a positive impact on the readers‟ decision to go to the cinema and enjoy this movie From the reference to the data of EMRs and VMRs, we can see that the English and Vietnamese film reviewers are similar in the use of Explicit and Implicit Appreciation when they use Explicit values higher than Implicit ones This reveals that the writers of both languages prefer giving direct and straightforward evaluation of all aspects of the movies; as a result; readers will find it easy to fully understand their point of view as well as their assessment of the movies To sum up, from the qualitative and quantitative analysis of Appreciation resources between EMR and VMRs, some similarities and differences were spotted In both EMRs and VMRs, Appreciation accounts for a great majority of Attitude The reviewers of the two languages tend to pay much attention to the evaluation of the impact and the quality of things or performances in the movies According to the analyzed data, there is also a similarity in the use of positive and negative as well as explicit and implicit resources between EMRs and VMRs However, a noticeable difference was found between the two languages The difference lies in the proportion of each subtype of Appreciation in the two sources of data 78 4.3 Summary In this chapter, the analysis of the category attitudinal resources in comments given by reviewers of EMRs and VMRs through the perspective of Appraisal Theory has been investigated All sub-types of Attitude used in the reviews by English and Vietnamese reviewers were found and discussed A number of interesting findings also revealed the similarities and differences between EMRs and VMRs in terms of Attitudinal resources For more detail, the adequate conclusion of the findings is introduced in the next chapter 79 CHAPTER CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS This final chapter summarizes the outcomes of the research and draws major conclusions from these in terms of comparing and contrasting the frequency of occurrence of Attitudinal resources in EMRs and VMRs On the basis of the conclusion, the study proposes some implications for teaching and learning English The chapter ends with the limitations of the thesis and some suggestions for further studies 5.1 Conclusions As stated in the previous chapter, this research, Attitudinal resources in English and Vietnamese movie reviews of Pixar‟s movies: An Appraisal study, focuses on Attitudinal resources in English and Vietnamese movie reviews of Pixar‟s movies Thereafter, based on the findings and results under investigation, a contrastive comparison in terms of Attitudinal resources in the language in English and Vietnamese reviews is presented In order to conduct the research successfully, the theoretical background of Appraisal Theory in general and the system of Attitude in particular, related issues and relevant studies were thoroughly examined A detailed outline was also carried out to specify steps of the study When it comes to the data collection, both quantitative and qualitative methods are employed for the analysis of 40 reviews of movies (20 reviews from English newspapers and 20 reviews from Vietnamese ones) to investigate three attitudinal resources in EMRs and VMRs and find out the similarities and differences between EMRs and VMRs in terms of Attitudinal meanings namely Affect, Judgement, and Appreciation Following are the major conclusions drawn out in the findings and discussions under investigation 80 The results of the analysis reveal that sub-types of Attitude occur in both EMRs and VMRs Both English writers and Vietnamese writers used a wide range of three types- Affect, Judgement and Appreciation However, the rate of distribution of Attitudinal resources in the two corpora is different The findings show that there are similarities and differences in the ways the writers of English and Vietnamese reviews, the viewers as well as the characters in the movies show their Attitude towards things In terms of Affect, there are some similarities and differences between EMRs and VMRs To begin with the similarities, firstly, all of the four subcategories of Affect resources occur in both EMRs and VMRs Secondly, the proportion of Affect is rather high compared with that of Judgement, which means that emotional feelings are quite focused in both EMRs and VMRs Thirdly, the tendency towards the use of positive Affect dominates negative Affect in EMRs and VMRs It can be seen that the writers of both languages tend to express positively their viewpoints towards all the aspects of the movies as the aim of enabling the readers to relate to the film more effectively and become more emotionally involved Moreover, the writers also allow readers to have an in-depth view of how emotions are expressed by describing the characters‟ feelings Additionally, the frequency of occurrence of Authorial Affect dominates that of Non-Authorial It reveals that the reviewers of both languages instead of presenting their own the feelings and emotions, they focus on showing the feelings and emotions of the audiences and the characters in the movies Another similarity shared by both languages is that both EMRs and VMRs favour the use of Un/Happiness in expressing emotions It seems that the emotional evaluation concerned with “affair of heart” is emphasized by both English and Vietnamese reviewers Different 81 from Un/Happiness, Dis/Satisfaction resources are the least frequently used in EMRs and VMRs It can be argued that the English and Vietnamese reviewers prefer paying much attention to the expression of feelings in terms of disquietedness, surprise, confidence and trust as well as the feelings of peace and anxiety rather than expressing feelings of achievement and frustration in relation to the movies they are reviewing Apart from these similarities in the use of Affect, there is still a difference between the two languages The frequency of occurrence of Authorial in EMRs is higher than that in VMRs It reveals that English reviewers tend to express their own emotions more frequently than the reviewers of VMRs With regard to Judgement, the proportion of Judgement in both EMRs and VMRs is much lower than that of Affect and Appreciation, which means that assessing human behavior is not the focus of the evaluation in both EMRs and VMRs Moreover, there is an overwhelming use of Judgement resources of Social Esteem with the dominance of Capacity resources in both languages The predominant use of Social Esteem shows that the writers of both languages tend to lay greater emphasis on assessment of admiration and criticism towards capacity, speciality or resoluteness of the characters or the filmmakers rather than their honesty or ethicality Moreover, the majority of Judgement resources are explicitly used in both EMRs and VMRs, which shows that the reviewers of EMRs and VMRs choose to the assessment of human behavior explicitly rather than implicitly It is possible that via using the explicit meaning, the writers in both languages would like to express clearly their points of view about the behavior of the characters and the filmmakers so as to help readers understand much more about the movies 82 Lastly, it can be seen that both languages are similar in the tendency of using more positive Judgement resources than negative ones In addition, the predominant use of Capacity in the two corpora reveals that English and Vietnamese reviewers want to show how capable the characters as well as the filmmakers are with the hope that their reviews can convince the readers to watch the movies Beside these similarities, the use of Judgement in EMRs is different from that in VMRs in some ways Particularly, the writers of VMRs use more Tenacity resources than Normality ones while Normality resources rank second to Tenacity in EMRs The finding indicates that Vietnamese writers possibly want to focus on assessing the resoluteness of the characters rather than evaluate the usualness or speciality of the characters in the movies As far as Appreciation is concerned, EMRs and VMRs are similar in some ways Firstly, with respect to the frequency of occurrence of Appreciation sub-types, the three sub-types were found to occur in similar ranks between the two languages Specifically, Reaction ranks first, followed by Valuation and the lowest is Composition It reveals that the writers of both EMRs and VMRs incline to focus on evaluating the impact and the quality of the movies Secondly, regarding positive and negative resources, the findings show that English and Vietnamese reviewers tend to use more positive resources of Appreciation than negative ones A possible explanation for this might be that the writers want to impress readers by using positive Appreciation values as a compliment on the movies Finally, both the writers in the two languages used Explicit Appreciation items frequently rather than implicit Appreciation Like Judgement resources, English reviewers and Vietnamese ones want to give readers clear viewpoints about the movies However, there is a little point of difference between the two languages 83 in the use of Appreciation The rate of percentage of Reaction resources on EMRs is higher than that in VMRs This indicates that the reviewers of EMRs pay much attention to describe the emotional impact of the movies towards themselves In addition, the proportion of positive Appreciation resources in EMRs also is higher than that in VMRs This can be inferred that the reviewers of EMRs are not too strict in evaluating the movies Furthermore, Explicit Appreciation resources in VMRs are used with a higher frequency than that in EMRs It suggests that Vietnamese writers evaluate the things, performances and happenings in the movies more straightforwardly than English writers 5.2 Implications Under investigation into Attitudinal resources in EMRs and VMRs, it is hoped that discovering sub-types of Attitudinal resources as well as pointing out the similarities and differences in the use of these sub-types between EMRs and VMRs can be beneficial to some extent, to the teaching and learning of English With respect to this intention, the study can have the following implications First, the findings of the study are expected to bring some help for language teaching The study will help teachers to acquire more knowledge about semantic features of Attitudinal resource which plays an important role in expressing feelings and assessing the attitude of human characters and events or phenomena Furthermore, language teachers will be able to give guidance to their students on how to distinguish these different types of Attitude in particular contexts without getting confused Teachers can set exercises to help students understand how evaluative language can be used It can be seen that teachers who enable students to understand how evaluative language is used could help them to build their ability in expressing emotions, 84 feelings, assessing human behavior or evaluating things, objects and to use this assessment in real-life contexts Second, the findings provide the language learners‟ semantics knowledge of comprehending and using Attitude effectively Based on the findings from the study, language learners can understand the nature of Attitude in use Moreover, Appraisal Theory is extremely useful for learners to analyze writers/speakers‟ discourse as well as to understand how strong or weak the writers/speakers‟ emotion is A good understanding of expressions denoting attitude helps learners enrich their ability in comprehending and using the language in order to develop their language skills Notably, for learners who are major in journalism, marketing or business, this thesis can be expected to help them to express their feelings, their opinions, their evaluation effectively In addition, thanks to being exposed to different sources and target languages, learners may be more aware of cultural differences and can identify the differences to avoid misusing and understanding what the writer or speaker says At the result, learners may also master how to use Attitude in suitable situations or contexts to get the best benefits in daily communication and in reading and writing comprehension 5.3 Limitations Besides the positive contributions, the study has some limitations that are unavoidable Due to the limit of time, reference materials as well as constraints faced by the researcher, the study inevitably has shortcomings Firstly, the corpus of data is collected within only 40 texts downloaded from some websites on the Internet; therefore, the data is not comprehensive enough to reflect the reality of using Attitudinal resources by reviewers of EMRs and VMRs Secondly, all sub-types of Appraisal are used popularly in the reviews of Pixar‟s movies; however, the study only focused mainly on 85 Attitude Finally, the authors‟ experience in doing scientific research is inadequate, so there may remain some mistakes and weaknesses that prevent the study from achieving prominent goals The study certainly has not held up to all of the author‟s expectations The limitations described above open up a number of avenues for future research As a result, further studies can be conducted to compensate for the inadequacies of the present study This study is expected to contribute useful knowledge to teachers and learners, but it has not reached a deep and thorough level as expected 5.4 Suggestions for further research The study has investigated into Attitudinal resources in English and Vietnamese movie reviews of Pixar‟s movies with regard to evaluative language This study has just approached a small side in the whole grand work In spite of the fact that I have a burning ambition to further research, the limitation of time, materials as well as other reasons urges me to recommend to those who have desire for further studies the following topics: - Engagement resources in English and Vietnamese movie reviews of Pixar‟s movies: An Appraisal study; - Graduation resources in English and Vietnamese movie reviews of Pixar‟s movies: An Appraisal study 86 REFERENCE A ENGLISH [1] Hood, S (2004) Appraising research: Taking stance in academic writing Doctoral Philosophy Thesis, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia [2] Liu, X & Thompson, P (2009) Attitude in students‟ argumentative writing: A contrastive perspective University of reading language studies working paper 1, 3-15 [3] Martin, J R (1996) Types of stuctures: deconstructing notions of constituency in clause and text In E H Hovy & D R Scott (Eds.), Computational and conversational discourse: Burning issues- an 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Attitudinal resources are used in English and Vietnamese movie reviews of Pixar‟s movies? What is the frequency of occurrence of Attitudinal resources used in English and Vietnamese movie reviews of Pixar‟s... describing and analyzing attitudinal values as well as finding out the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese reviews of Pixar‟s movies in terms of Attitude On the other hand,... during the course and the study of this thesis iii ABSTRACT This study employed Appraisal Theory in a contrastive analysis of Attitudinal resources in English and Vietnamese movie reviews of