Luận văn thạc sĩ an investigation into attitudinal resources in english love short stories

THE MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING QUY NHON UNIVERSITY PHITSAKHONE TANSAVATH AN INVESTIGATION INTO ATTITUDINAL RESOURCES IN ENGLISH LOVE SHORT STORIES Field: English Language Code: 8.22.02.01 Supervisor: Võ Duy Đức, Ph.D e BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC QUY NHƠN PHITSAKHONE TANSAVATH NGHIÊN CỨU NGHĨA THÁI ĐỘ TRONG CHUYỆN NGẮN TÌNH YÊU TRONG TIẾNG ANH Chuyên ngành: Ngôn ngữ Anh Mã số: 8.22.02.01 Người hướng dẫn: Võ Duy Đức, Ph.D e i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP Except where reference is made in the text of the research paper, this thesis “ An Investigation into Attitudinal Resources in English love short stories” contain no material published elsewhere or extracted in the whole, or in part from paper by which I have qualified for or been award another degree or diploma Moreover, no one’s work has been used without acknowledgement in the paper This paper has not been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any other territory institution Binh Dinh, June 2019 Phitsakhone TANSAVATH e ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are many who deserve recognition here for their contributions to this work First, I would like to acknowledge my deep indebtedness to my supervisor, Doctor Võ Duy Đức for his enthusiastic guidance and valuable suggestions Without his immense help, I would never have completed my thesis I would like to express my sincere thanks to all of my professors at Quy Nhon University for their useful lectures that provided a solid foundation for me to carry out the study Lastly, I am deeply grateful to my friends who gave me great encouragement and interesting discussions as well as all of the member of my family for their love, understanding and support e iii ABSTRACT The study aims to examine attitudinal resources used in English love short stories Appraisal Theory developed by Martin and White (2005) was employed as a framework to analyze thirty English love short stories The data was mainly collected from Chobir Dokan and Success of Life, which are blogs about love, friendship, and life The combination of quantitative and qualitative methods was applied for the data analysis The findings show that Affect resources are used the most in the stories, followed by Judgment and finally Appreciation The findings also show that implicit judgment on human behavior depicted in the English love short story occurs more frequently than explicit one The study makes some theoretical and practical contribution to language learning, teaching and translating practices e iv TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT III LIST OF 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 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 2.1.1 Systemic Functional Linguistics 2.1.2 Appraisal Theory 2.1.3 Attitude 2.1.3.1 Affect 2.1.3.2 Judgment 10 2.1.3.3 Appreciation 13 2.1.4 Engagement 15 2.1.5 Graduation 16 2.2 PREVIOUS STUDIES 18 2.3 SUMMARY 20 CHAPTER METHODS AND PROCEDURES 21 e v 3.1 RESEARCH METHODS 21 3.2 DESCRIPTION OF DATA 21 3.3 DATA ANALYSIS 22 3.4 RESEARCH PROCEDURES 22 3.5 RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY 23 CHAPTER FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 24 4.1 GENERAL FEATURES OF ARS IN ENGLISH LOVE SHORT STORIES (ELSSS) 24 4.2 ARS OF AFFECT 25 4.2.1 Dis/Inclination 26 4.2.2 Un/Happiness 29 4.2.3 In/Security 33 4.2.4 Dis/Satisfaction 35 4.3 ARS OF JUDGMENT 36 4.3.1 Social Esteem 37 4.3.2 Social Sanction 41 4.4 ARS OF APPRECIATION 44 4.4.1 Reaction 45 4.4.2 Composition 49 4.4.3 Valuation 51 CHAPTER CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 54 5.1 CONCLUSIONS 54 5.2 IMPLICATIONS 55 5.3 LIMITATIONS 56 5.4 SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH 56 REFERENCES 58 APPENDIX 60 e vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AT: Appraisal Theory SFL: Systemic Function Linguistics ARs: Attitudinal Resources ELSSs: English Love Short Stories e vii LIST OF TABLES Tables Title Number Page number 2.1 Affect - Dis/Inclination 2.2 Affect - Un/happiness (Martin and White, 2005: 49) 2.3 Affect - In/security 2.4 Affect - Dis/satisfaction 2.5 Judgements of Esteem and Sanction 11 2.6 Types and Sub-types of Judgment 12 2.7 Types of appreciation (Martin and White, 2005: 56) 13 4.1 ARs in thirty short love stories 24 4.2 Affect in the ELSSs 25 4.3 Judgment in ELSSs 36 4.4 Appreciation in ELSSs 44 e viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure Title Number Page number 2.1 Sub-system 0f Attitude (Martin & White, 2005:42-58) 15 4.1 ARs of Affect 26 4.2 ARs of Judgment in ELSSs 37 4.3 ARs of Appreciation in ELSSs 44 e 46 (4.85) She looked up at him and smiled “Can I help you?” said she in the sweetest voice ever [E12] (4.86) After their wedding, the couple had a sweet and happy life for some more days [E16] (4.87) Ok…Ok!!! Erm… because you are beautiful, because your voice is sweet, because you are caring, because you are loving, because you are thoughtful, because of your smile, because of your every movements [E20] By using the word sweet, the writers in the above examples want to express the idea that the people who fall in love will evaluate everything that belong to their lovers or things that they and their lovers share together in a romantic and honeyed way One more word that is used so frequently in the thirty English love short stories is the adjective great For instances: (4.88) It was an ambitious plan and he was heavily ridiculed for it However, after working for 22 years with the greatest determination and willpower, a path was carved into the hill [E2] (4.89) When the couple left, she told Frank that she heard his voice while she was in a coma and that it was his voice that was the greatest aid in helping her to return to consciousness [E6] (4.90) In great secrecy, they planned their escape and set these plans into action when the young man’s family finally found out about it [E9] (4.91) Rama’s army met Ravana’s army and there was a great battle between them [E22] From the above examples, it can be realized that all the reaction items employed by the writers are the adjective great and its superlative form e 47 greatest However, they are used to express different ideas As in examples (4.88) and (4.89), the writers want to show their appreciation towards the things the people often to display their emotions towards their lovers Besides, as in examples (4.90) and (4.91) the writers appreciate the factors that may be the barriers the lovers have to overcome or the action performed by the lovers who try to everything in order to be able to live together Some other adjectives are also used to express the positive appreciation towards things relating to people’s love This can be seen in the examples below: (4.92) Love is like the sun, it shines and it's warm Love is like rain, it's calm and refreshing [E15] (4.93) And then the doors open and there she is – my love – she looks at me– then smiles and says in that melodious voice of hers, “sorry, we are closed” (4.94) She saw herself, all in wonderful glory of her childhood and where she still waited for her “Knight” [E21] Through the adjectives such as warm, refreshing, melodious and wonderful in the above sentences, it is clear to see that everything becomes miraculous and splendid in the eyes of the people who fall in love On the contrary, the use of negative items of reaction can also be found in the corpus of the data Firstly, the writers employ these items to evaluate the things the lovers have to experience in their lives, as can be seen in the following examples: (4.95) Tragically enough, his wife died from the serious injuries before Dashrath could anything about it [E2] e 48 (4.96) In 2007, his beautiful wife Susann died in a car accident It was an unimaginable tragedy for the young man [E4] (4.97) In 2012, bomb disposal expert Taylor Morris was severely injured after the explosion of an improvised bomb in Afghanistan [E5] (4.98) It was a shocking diagnosis but Gene decided to use the time he had left to make all the necessary arrangements for his wife Carol, with whom he had been married for 30 years [E8] By using the above different adjectives, the writers want to emphasize the obstacles the people who are in love may meet This implies the fact that love is not always smooth and the lovers sometimes must sacrifice a lot of things so as to have a happy life One more negative word whose frequency of occurrence is the highest in ELSSs is painful which can be realized through the examples below: (4.99) If I am really not the missing part of your love, let me go and search for some one who can feel this It is less painful this way Let us go on our own ways and search for our own life partners [E16] (4.100) The boy sensed there was something wrong because of the painful silence they shared between them that night [E27] From the examples we can see that the writers use the neggative adjective painful in different situations but with the same intended meanings That is the writers want to describe the pangs the lovers often feel at the moment of separation Similarly, through the negative reaction items, the writers evaluate things around the people who have said goodbye to their lovers as follows: e 49 (4.101) In the dark and lonely night, he lit his cigarette and felt the lingering ache in his heart [E16] (4.102) Oh the sky didn’t fall, the stars didn’t shine down, the snowfall was not whiter, the moon was not bigger, the rain was still irritating [E21] From the above examples, it can be realized that when people are happy with their love, everything will become beautiful in their eyes In contrast, everything will become dull and ugly when the lovers are not happy Therefore, the writers employ the negative adjectives such as dark, lonely and irritating to describe the things under the eyes of the people who are feeling unhappily 4.4.2 Composition From the analyzed data, it can be realized that the items of complexity are employed in ELSSs, and most of them are negative ones which are used to evaluate the period of time when the people who are in love meet obstacles This is shown in the examples below: (4.103) Instead of allowing the difficult circumstances to stop him from seeing his beloved wife again, he met the decision to use what he had in order to see her again [E1] (4.104) But he remembered what he had promised his wife It was the promise that kept him going through this difficult time [E4] (4.105) It was an incredibly difficult situation not only for him but also his family and especially his long-term girlfriend Danielle [E5] (4.106) The notes are beautiful and very personal statements meant to encourage Carol in this difficult time But Gene also reminded his e 50 wife in these statements to fully enjoy every aspect of life, to sell his car and to move on with her life [E8] It is the same as affect and judgement, things can be appreciated positively or negatively In the above examples, the writers employ the negative word difficult to evaluate the period of time when the lovers have to encounter problems in their lives However, they did so to show their understanding and sharing attitude towards the lovers who have endured the losses of the people for whom they have deep affection These intended meanings are shown more clearly through other words in the following examples: (4.107) But instead of ever giving him up, Danielle became Taylor’s pillar in life She helped him recover and took care of him during this incredibly challenging time [E5] (4.108) The girl went out to working society, whereas the guy was oversea, continuing his studies They sent their love though email and phone calls Though it’s hard, but both never thought of giving up [E18] (4.109) It has been forty-eight hours since the rain started, it’s the heaviest in ten years I heard the chap say on the weather channel and it’s likely to continue And these hours have been the toughest – not being able to see my love – [E19] By using the adjectives of complexity, one more time the writers want to show their sympathy towards the lovers as well as to praise the people for their patience or faith to their lovers In addition, some of the positive appreciation items can be found in the corpus of the data, as shown in the examples below: e 51 (4.110) Many years ago, when she was at a similar age, the teacher (let’s call her Ms Patterson) fell in love with a young man stemming from a wealthy family [E9] (4.111) Once, a long time ago, there was a newly wedded couple, still dressed in their rich wedding clothes, relaxing in their new home [E23] Through the positive adjectives such as wealthy and rich, the writers want to assess the background of the lovers which may have an important influence on their love Similarly, some negative words used to talk about the family of the lovers can also be realized as follows: (4.112) The artist was born into a poor Indian family of the lowest caste, also known as the “untouchables.” [E1] (4.113) As Ms Patterson came from a poor background, she couldn’t possibly have afforded to go with him at that time [E9] (4.114) One day, a young guy and a young girl fell on love but the guy come from a poor family the girl parents weren’t too happy [E17] It can be seen clearly from the above examples that the writers use the negative adjective poor which is the antonym of rich By doing so, they want to show the contrast and emphasize on the importance of the lovers’ background It is the contrast in background that can be considered as barriers and can lead to misery or obstacles for the lovers 4.4.3 Valuation The first thing that is evaluated by the writers in thirty short love stories is the value that the stories of the people who are in love can bring about , as can be seen in the examples below: e 52 (4.115) I appreciate the hard work of my sister and my brothers [B] (4.116) It’s a beautiful ending of an incredibly inspiring love story that shows that nothing can ever stand in-between to people who really love each other [E5] (4.117) When a young student of a Catholic Church asked her teacher about the reasons why she decided to become a religious sister, her teacher told her a heartwarming love story [E9] Similarly, the value of the actions the people have done for their lovers is appraised in the corpus of the data as follows: (4.118) Gene also reminded his wife in these statements to fully enjoy every aspect of life, to sell his car and to move on with her life It was the most heartwarming farewell gift one could ever imagine [E8] (4.119) When they finally asked him why he was so interested in makeup artistry, he gave the most inspiring beautiful reply [E10] From all the above examples, we can see that the same adjectives heartwarming and inspiring are used However, in the examples the writers use these two words with the meaning that the people falling in love always want to the best things for their lovers In addition, the writers employ the appreciation items in order to talk about anything relating to the characters in their love stories For instance: (4.120) Despite the incredibly difficult circumstances, the artist named Pradyumna Kumar Mahanandia had gained an outstanding reputation for being a gifted painter His reputation led Charlotte Von Sledvin to travel all the way to India to get her portrait done [E1] (4.121) Nonetheless, the portrait was magnificent and Charlotte fell for his simplicity and his beautiful character [E1] e 53 (4.122) They joined the church, took holy orders and began traveling the world for various humanitarian missions [E9] It can be realized from the above examples that all the appreciation items are positive ones By using these adjectives, the writers want to imply the meaning that it is such valuable things that attract people to come together and become lovers of each other On the contrary, some negative resources of appreciation can be found in ELSSs which can be seen in the following examples (4.123) After Pradyumna had finished his studies, he took all his possessions and sold them Unfortunately, the money he earned didn’t even come close to a flight ticket All he could afford was a cheap and used bicycle [E1] (4.124) The man went to work and passes by a watch shop, sold his damaged watch at a low price and went to buy a comb for his wife [E25] An amazing thing that can be found in the above examples is that the writers employ negative words to express positive appraisal By doing so, the writers want to show that the people are willing to anything they can to be able to come to their lovers as in example (4.124 ) or to make their lovers happy as in (4.125) In short, in this chapter, the author tries to present the results of the analysis of the investigated data Besides, the frequencies of the identified attitudinal resources are provided and the ways these attitudinal values used to convey the writers’ messages towards the readers are also discussed and explained in details e 54 CHAPTER CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS This chapter provides the conclusions and implications of the study, followed by limitations and suggestions for further research 5.1 Conclusions As stated in the previous chapter, this work attempts to explore whether ARs belonging to sub-types of Appraisal are used in ELSSs and examine the ways how these attitudinal resources are employed to convey the messages of the writers towards the readers In order to achieve these goals, the Appraisal framework developed by Martin & White (2005) was adopted as a major guideline through the thesis Based on the findings obtained from the analysis of the thirty English love short stories, it is quite rational for the researcher to come to the following conclusions First of all, in terms of Attitude values, it can be clearly seen that all the sub-types of ARs are employed in the corpus of the data However, they are distributed with different frequency of occurrence Among three types of attitudinal items, Affect constitutes the largest proportion in comparison with Judgement and Appreciation This means that the writers pay more attention to describing the feelings of the people who fall in love than evaluating their behavior and things influencing their love As regards Affect, all types of Affect resources are employed and Un/happiness Affect is most frequently used by the love-story writers Besides, English writers tend to use more values of Dis/Inclination than those of In/security and Dis/satisfaction e 55 With regard to Judgement, all sub-types of Judgement are used with more Implicit items than Explicit ones As far as Appreciation is concerned, there is a similar tendency which shows that the writers employ all the sub-types of Appreciation To be more specific, Reaction is used the most frequently and there are more positive values of Appreciation than negative ones Additionally, the ways the attitudinal resources function in ELSSs are realized as follows: Firstly, the writers use resources of Affect to show the happy and unhappy emotions of the people who are in love Besides, the desires the people want to make for their lovers are shown through Dis/Inclination Secondly, by means of Judgement resources, the writers try to demonstrate both people’s patience and faithfulness for their lovers when they have to encounter obstacles in their lives They also show their high appreciation of the people who fall in love for their kindness Thirdly, by means of resources of Appreciation, the writers want to evaluate the things around that can affect love or can be affected by the feelings of the people who fall in love In short, language is a medium for expressing one’s attitude toward others and things In their short love stories, the writers elaborated all the sensitive ARs with the aims to praise the beautiful and true love as well as to condemn the people who are selfish and greedy when loving These are the reasons why short love stories have become more and more interesting and have attracted so many people all over the world 5.2 Implications It is true that evaluative language is used popularly in different kinds of discourse and thanks to it, writers can express their thinking, feelings, e 56 emotions and their evaluations to others or things Therefore, discovering subtypes of Appraisal as well as finding out the functions of these sub-types in conveying the messages of the writers towards the readers have great contributions to teaching reading and translating love stories In attempting to improve the learner’s competence in learning reading and translating short love stories, teachers should note that it is necessary to raise students’ awareness of the fact that attitudinal resources cannot be absent from discourse in general and in short love stories Therefore, they should master the theory of the Appraisal System so that they can recognize and know how to use attitudinal values in their reading and translating 5.3 Limitations In this thesis, the author applies the Appraisal theory of Martin and White (2005) to analyze the thirty English love short stories However, there are some limitations in the study due to practical constraints The first limitation is the number of the samples because the data for the study comprised only thirty stories Therefore, the results of the study would be limited and we cannot generalize about attitude in all the love stories The second limitation is the scope of the study due to the fact that the study focuses just on analyzing the attitude system instead of all the three systems of Appraisal The researcher only found out and described the attitudinal resources employed in the data rather than other Appraisal items such as engagement and graduation 5.4 Suggestions for further research Due to the above limitations, we realize that it is necessary for us to have further studies as follows: e 57 Engagement in English love short stories; Graduation in short English love short stories; A contrastive study on Attitudinal resources in English and Laotian love stories Hopefully, more interesting findings will be found out to help people understand more distinctive characteristics of the love stories in particular and recognize the importance of the Appraisal theory in general e 58 REFERENCES [1] Birot, S (2008) Evaluation Media Reporting: A Comparative Analysis in BBC, CNN and Aljazera Reports Unpublished MA Dissertation, Department of English Language and Literature University of Liverpool, : U.K [2] Daulay, F (2010) Appraisal in Inaugural Addresses of the presidents of America from George Bush Senior to Barack Obama Medan: University of Sumatera Utara [3] Daulay.,(2010) Appraisal in Inaugural Addresses of the presidents of America from George Bush Senior to Barack Obama Medan: University of Sumatera Utara [4] Duc, V D (2011) Style, Structure and Ideology in English and Vietnamese Business Hard News Reporting – A Comparative Study Ph.D Thesis University of Adelaide [5] Dung, N U (2010) An Investigation into Stylistic Devices in Political Speeches by US Presidents, M.A thesis, Danang [6] Giles, D (2012) Student writers’ use of Evaluative language in undergraduate ELT research reports in two Mexican BA Programmes Mextesol Journal, 30, 1405-3470 [7] Halliday, (1994) An Introduction to Functional Grammar (2 ed.) London: Edward Arnold [8] Halliday, & Matthiessen, (2004) An introduction to functional grammar (3 ed.) London: Arnold [9] Martin, (2000) Beyond Exchange: APPRAISAL Systems in English [10] Martin, and Rose, (2003).Working with Discourse: Meaning beyond the clause New York: Continuum e 59 [11] Martin, (2005) The language of evaluation: appraisal in English New York: Palgrave Macmillan [12] Nguyen Thi Thanh Hien (2014) A Comparative Study of InterpersonalMeaning in Hotel Brochures Written in English and Vietnamese – AppraisalApproach Unpublished M.A Thesis Quynhon: Quynhon University [13] Pascual, & Unger, (2010) Appraisal in the research genres: ananalysis of grant proposals by Argentinean researchers RevistaSignos [14] White, (2001) Appraisal [15] Wang, H (2010) Interpersonal Meanings in Nobel Prize for Literature Acceptance Speeches – Analysis from Appraisal Perspective M.A Thesis Jiangxi Normal University [16] Wu, H (2013) ppraisal Perspective on Attitudinal Analysis of Public Service Advertising Discourse English Language & Literature Studies e 60 APPENDIX https://www.chobirdokan.com/wp-content/uploads/love-short-stories.jpg http://www.planetofsuccess.com/blog/beautiful-short-love-stories/ https://www.chobirdokan.com/wp-content/uploads/cute-short-love- stories.jpg https://www.chobirdokan.com/wp-content/uploads/cute-sad-love- stories.jpg http://www.planetofsuccess.com/blog/beautiful-short-love-stories/ http://mylovablearticle.blogspot.com/ https://brightside.me/inspiration-relationships/9-short-stories-about-truelove-429060/ website:www.grammatics.com/Appraisal e ... using emotional elements in any kinds of discourse These have inspired me to carry out the study ? ?An investigation into Attitudinal Resources in English love short stories? ?? with the aim to find... far in Vietnam and in other countries However, no prior research is found in investigating attitudinal resources in short love stories in English from the perspective of AT by J.R Martin and... thirty English love short stories, the data was analyzed with the following steps: - The attitudinal resources used in the thirty English love short stories were located; - The ways attitudinal resources