(Luận văn thạc sĩ) an investigation into graduation in online film reviews

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING QUY NHON UNIVERSITY NGUYỄN MỘNG KỲ DUYÊN h AN INVESTIGATION INTO GRADUATION IN ONLINE FILM REVIEWS MASTER THESIS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE Binh Dinh - 2019 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING QUY NHON UNIVERSITY NGUYỄN MỘNG KỲ DUYÊN h AN INVESTIGATION INTO GRADUATION IN ONLINE FILM REVIEWS Field: English Linguistics Code: 8.22.02.01 Supervisor: NGŨ THIỆN HÙNG, Ph.D BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC QUY NHƠN NGUYỄN MỘNG KỲ DUYÊN h PHÂN TÍCH PHẠM TRÙ THANG ĐỘ TRONG ĐÁNH GIÁ PHIM TRỰC TRUYẾN Chuyên ngành: Ngôn ngữ Anh Mã số: 8.22.02.01 Người hướng dẫn: TS NGŨ THIỆN HÙNG i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I hereby declare that this thesis “An Investigation into Graduation in Online Film Reviews” has been composed solely by myself and that it has not been submitted, in whole or in part, to any previous degree or professional qualification Besides, the experimental work is almost entirely my own work Furthermore, collaborative contributions have been indicated clearly and acknowledged Binh Dinh, 2019 Nguyễn Mộng Kỳ Duyên h ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Throughout the writing of this thesis, I have received a great deal of support and assistance Firstly, I would like to acknowledge my deep indebtedness to my supervisor, Dr Ngu Thien Hung, whose expertise was invaluable in the formulating of the research topic and methodology in particular Without his enthusiastic guidance, helpful advice, and enormous encouragement, this thesis would never have been completed I would like to thank all of my teachers for their valuable and interesting lectures, which helped me to lay the solid foundation for this thesis In addition, I would like to thank my classmates, M.A students of English course 20th at Quy Nhon University with their helping during the time I studied and carried out my thesis With my heart, finally, I want to thank my parents, my husband, and h my little son, with their wise counsel and sympathetic ear which is extremely significant for me to overcome a lot of troubles from the beginning of the thesis iii ABSTRACT This research examined Graduation used in online film reviews in the perspectives of Appraisal Theory The research aims at finding out Graduation resources in online film reviews in terms of syntactic and semantic features The study was conducted based on the theoretical background of Appraisal Theory by Martin & White (2005) and grammatical model of structural units by Quirk et al (1985) This descriptive study was conducted with the application of both quantitative and qualitative approaches The samples of the study consist of 20 film reviews in English collected from online websites The findings reveal that the reviewers tend to use Graduation resources in form of adjective phrases in online film reviews in English to strengthen their assessment of the films to draw the readers’ attention with different tones of evaluation Also, there h is the overall tendency of Graduation resources under force category, especially expressions of number category to make the writers’ evaluation more believable Hopefully, the results of the study will offer the readers knowledge of evaluative language related to teaching and learning English as well as daily communication iv TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vii LIST OF TABLES viii LIST OF FIGURES ix LIST OF CHARTS x CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale 1.2 Aim and objectives of the study h 1.2.1 Aim of the study 1.2.2 Objectives of the study 1.3 Research questions 1.4 Significance of the study 1.5 Scope of the study 1.6 Organization of the study CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Previous studies 2.2 Theoretical background 11 2.2.1 Syntactic Theory 11 2.2.2 Overview of Appraisal Theory 15 2.2.3 Definition of Film reviews 21 2.3 Summary 22 v CHAPTER 24 METHODOLOGY AND PROCEDURE 24 3.1 Research methods 24 3.2 Data collection 24 3.2.1 Sampling of study 25 3.2.2 Population of study 27 3.3 Data analysis 27 3.4 Research procedures 28 3.5 Summary 29 CHAPTER 30 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 30 4.1 Syntactic features of Graduation used in online films reviews in English 30 h 4.1.1 Graduation resources used in online film reviews in English in form of nominal phrases 30 4.1.2 Graduation resources used in online film reviews in English in form of verb phrases 34 4.1.3 Graduation resources used in online film reviews in English in form of adjective phrases 38 4.1.4 Graduation resources used in online film reviews in English in form of adverb phrases 46 4.2 Semantic features of Graduation used in online films reviews in English 54 4.2.1 Graduation resources used in online film reviews in English as Force 54 4.2.2 Graduation resources used in online film reviews in English in terms of Focus 64 vi 4.3 Summary 72 CHAPTER 73 CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 73 5.1 Conclusions 73 5.2 Implications 75 5.2.1 To the learners 75 5.2.2 To the teachers 76 5.3 Limitation of the study 76 5.4 Suggestions for further research 77 REFERENCES 78 In English 78 In Vietnamese 79 Online sources 80 h APPENDIX 81 vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS : Systemic Functional Linguistic SFG : Systemic Functional Grammar MCRs : Medical Case Reports NS : Native medical writers NNS : Non-native medical writers Ama : Adverb as Modifiers of Adjectives Amv : Adverb as Modifiers of Adjectives SA : Single Adjective CA : Comparative Adjective Spa : Superlative Adjective SN : Single Noun Cnp : Complex Noun Phrase Trv : Transitive Verb Inv : Intransitive Verb Sha : Focus: Sharpen Sof : Focus: Soften Qua : Force: Intensification-Quality Pro : Force: Intensification-Process Num : Force: Quantification-Number Dist : Force: Quantification-Extent-Distribution-Time Diss : Force: Quantification-Extent-Distribution-Space Prot : Force: Quantification-Extent-Proximity-Time Mas : Force: Quantification-Mass Num : Force: Quantification-Number h SFL