A study of Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese economic newspaper articles: an Appraisal Approach

A study of Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese economic newspaper articles: an Appraisal Approach.A study of Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese economic newspaper articles: an Appraisal Approach.A study of Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese economic newspaper articles: an Appraisal Approach.A study of Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese economic newspaper articles: an Appraisal Approach.A study of Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese economic newspaper articles: an Appraisal Approach.A study of Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese economic newspaper articles: an Appraisal Approach.A study of Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese economic newspaper articles: an Appraisal Approach.A study of Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese economic newspaper articles: an Appraisal Approach.A study of Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese economic newspaper articles: an Appraisal Approach.A study of Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese economic newspaper articles: an Appraisal Approach.A study of Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese economic newspaper articles: an Appraisal Approach.A study of Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese economic newspaper articles: an Appraisal Approach.A study of Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese economic newspaper articles: an Appraisal Approach.A study of Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese economic newspaper articles: an Appraisal Approach.A study of Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese economic newspaper articles: an Appraisal Approach.A study of Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese economic newspaper articles: an Appraisal Approach.A study of Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese economic newspaper articles: an Appraisal Approach.A study of Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese economic newspaper articles: an Appraisal Approach.A study of Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese economic newspaper articles: an Appraisal Approach.A study of Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese economic newspaper articles: an Appraisal Approach.A study of Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese economic newspaper articles: an Appraisal Approach.A study of Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese economic newspaper articles: an Appraisal Approach.A study of Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese economic newspaper articles: an Appraisal Approach.A study of Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese economic newspaper articles: an Appraisal Approach.A study of Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese economic newspaper articles: an Appraisal Approach.A study of Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese economic newspaper articles: an Appraisal Approach.A study of Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese economic newspaper articles: an Appraisal Approach.A study of Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese economic newspaper articles: an Appraisal Approach.A study of Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese economic newspaper articles: an Appraisal Approach.A study of Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese economic newspaper articles: an Appraisal Approach.A study of Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese economic newspaper articles: an Appraisal Approach.A study of Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese economic newspaper articles: an Appraisal Approach.

INTRODUCTION

RATIONALE

Newspapers have been generally regarded as a mirror of each society (Tim, 2011), which have had a major impact on the development of society In fact, in the trend of integration and globalization, newspapers in general and economic articles in particular are an effective tool which enables readers or the public to understand different economy-related issues and business cultures in various countries all over the world In the strong and diversified development of the newspaper genre, opinion articles are prominent (Kelling & Thomas, 2018), and make a significant contribution to the interpretation, analysis and evaluation of events to give readers a proper perception of the issues they are concerned (Huynh Thi Chuyen, 2014) The purpose of opinion articles may be to ―explain the significance of the glut of events‖ (John, 1973), make the news more understandable…put it into a better context to demonstrate its importance (Stonecipher, 1990), and guide the public toward a better knowledge of what is truly crucial (Jacobs & Townsley, 2011) In this genre, the attitude and the ideological viewpoints of the writers or the public‘s opinions are presented clearly and deeply Therefore, although opinion categories account for a small percentage in a newspaper, they not only contain valuable information but also are the

―soul‖ of the newspaper This is why the scope of the study is related to economic opinion articles among different types of economic newspaper articles.

From the linguistics perspective, with the outstanding feature that opinion articles are where attitudes of the writers and the public are expressed, it is proved that the language in opinion articles has attitudinal meanings with up/down-scaling Evaluative language is commonly realized in discourses in different languages; therefore, it is essential to investigate how language of evaluation is employed and realized in particular opinion discourses, especially in the economic field, and explore its similarities and differences in different languages.

The language of evaluation has been studied from a wide range of different perspectives Among them, the theoretical framework of Appraisal by Martin and White (2005) has been widely seen as the most currently systematic and influential framework. Appraisal, belonging to discourse semantics which is the third level of abstraction in language strata, has focused on meaning of the whole texts Martin and White (2005) introduced two terms ―Attitude and Graduation‖ in the Appraisal system in English, and showed a generally initial list of Attitude and Graduation values Accordingly, the dissertation raises a concern about how Appraisal system helps to recognize evaluative language in Vietnamese discourses in general and economic discourses in particular. Therefore, in the light of the Appraisal framework, the researcher hopes to explore and add more Attitude and Graduation values to the list in order to broaden the language source relating to Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese economic opinion articles.

It is normally so difficult for non-English writers or journalists to compose opinion articles, especially to employ exact appraisal resources in order to express their stances towards economic issues or policies Actually, if non-English authors want to be successful in academic or non-academic writing and in their study field, they must adhere to traditionalEnglish rhetorical approaches Therefore, a viable and effective measure for writers to tackle the challenges in second language writing might be to make the knowledge of writing explicit to them through a contrastive analysis of differences and similarities of Attitude andGraduation as evaluative language in English and Vietnamese in terms of semantic features and lexicogrammatical realizations.

For the reasons mentioned above, the researcher decided to carry out the study entitled “A study of Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese economic newspaper articles: an Appraisal Approach” Hopefully, the thesis can offer implications for writing opinion articles, teaching English skills, and translating articles from English toVietnam and vice versa through the application of the Appraisal framework.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

The dissertation aims at investigating the language used for denoting Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese economic opinion articles via the lens of Appraisal theory (Martin & White, 2005) An analysis of semantic features and lexicogrammatical realizations of Attitude and Graduation in separated English and Vietnamese economic opinion articles are conducted; then similarities and differences in terms of semantic features and lexicogrammatical realizations of Attitude and Graduation between EEOAs and VEOAs are indicated The findings can make contribution to the deeper insight into the language of evaluation, which facilitates skills and technique of writing newspaper articles, teaching English skills, and translation practices.

To achieve the aims of the study, the following objectives are intended to:

- Examine semantic features and lexicogrammatical realizations of Attitude and Graduation in English economic opinion articles;

- Examine semantic features and lexicogrammatical realizations of Attitude and Graduation in Vietnamese economic opinion articles;

- Discover similarities and differences in terms of semantic features and lexicogrammatical realizations of Attitude and Graduation between English economic opinion articles and Vietnamese economic opinion articles.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

Based on research objectives, this dissertation is formulated in the following questions:

1 What are semantic features and lexicogrammatical realizations of Attitude and Graduation in English economic opinion articles?

2 What are semantic features and lexicogrammatical realizations of Attitude and Graduation in Vietnamese economic opinion articles?

3 What are similarities and differences in terms of semantic features and lexicogrammatical realizations of Attitude and Graduation between English economic opinion articles and Vietnamese economic opinion articles?

SCOPE OF THE STUDY

Newspapers are classified into many distinctive categories Some previous studies have sought to examine the language use in hard news or reports (see Literature review). Unlike hard news, opinion articles offer a critical viewpoint on the current happenings It is not simply a recitation of facts; rather, it is an in-depth analysis of the problems that affect us all Therefore, the preferred choice for the investigation of the dissertation is the language of evaluation in the economic opinion articles In addition, the study only used the online economic opinion articles as samples instead of the printed ones due to the fact that online articles have grown in popularity as a result of the numerous benefits it offers to readers 100 economic opinion articles (50 in English and 50 in Vietnamese) were chosen randomly and downloaded from the websites of four reliable newspapers.

For the exploration of the evaluative language of economic opinion discourses, the thesis drew on the Appraisal framework by Martin and While (2005) This introduces a fresh perspective on discourse analysis in general and opinion genre analysis in particular Attitude will be investigated through two aspects: (1) Semantic features of Attitude in relation to Attitude subtypes, positive and negative Attitude, implicit and explicit Attitude based on the context of the discourses, (2) lexicogrammatical realizations of Attitude Similarly, Graduation is investigated in terms of semantic features of Graduation as well as lexicogrammatical realizations of Graduation.Covering all the cases of Graduation in both EEOAs and VEOAs seems to be an impossible task due to the heavy workload; therefore, the researcher decided to exclude the cases ofFocus and mainly focus on Graduation of Force.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

The thesis has examined the deployment of Attitude and Graduation – two subsystems of the Appraisal framework proposed by Martin & White (2005) in English and Vietnamese economic opinion articles In the lens of Appraisal Theory (Martin & White, 2005), economic opinion articles are analyzed at the discourse semantics level, which has reflected the nature of opinion discourses The language of evaluation in economic opinion articles is both explicitly and implicitly realized in a particular context to position readers to take the view of the attitudinal target The thesis has also addressed semantic shifts in the Attitudinal system and the use of Graduation to denote Attitudinal meanings In addition to identifying Graduation and Attitude as two separated domains, the cases that Graduation lies in Attitude values are examined The thesis is thus practically beneficial for language learners- teachers, language researchers, journalists and translators that desire to master language of evaluation in English and Vietnamese in their particular field.

From theoretical perspective, the thesis draws on theoretical framework of Appraisal at the discourse semantics level by Martin and White (2005), which has provided a comprehensive theoretical and descriptive systematization of the linguistic resources that can be employed in order to construe the social experience value, and thus helps to achieve a complete understanding of the patterns of interpersonal meaning beyond the manifestation of emotionality across discourse.

According to Martin and White (2005), developing an appraisal framework aims at expanding traditional accounts regarding issues of speaker/writer evaluation, certainty, commitment and knowledge, as well as considering how the textual voice positions itself with respect to other voices and other positions in the discourse Therefore, this theoretical orientation moves us towards an analysis of ―meanings in context‖ (Martin and White,

2005, p.94) With this thesis completed, the results of analysis using Appraisal is expected to be able to offer insights into the nature and the uses of evaluative language sources for Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese economic discourses.

The thesis contributes a methodology for analyzing and realizing Appraisal, examining how appraisal interacts with negation and the constructive nature of opinion All of the comments were tagged with labels that matched the various categories of the appraisal framework The thesis has provided a rich source of data to examine the realizations of Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese opinion discourses A list of Attitude and Graduation values is presented so as to broaden the language source relating to Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese This source of bi-lingual data can act as a useful source for teaching and learning of language of evaluation and for the practice of translation.

In the process of learning language skills such as listening or reading, understanding the meaning and the usage of appraisal language with the function of expressing attitudes in different appropriate scales will enable the learners to comprehensively recognize, identify and explain the discourses Another significance of the study concerns teaching of writing opinion articles at tertiary level Drawing on all the findings relating to the two aspects of economic opinion articles in the two languages – more implicit Attitude and Graduation and journalistic voices, the thesis offers valuable pedagogical suggestions to teachers and students who major in journalism or English for specific purposes (ESP) as to how to effectively write an economic opinion to reach potential native readers as well as article translation.

WORKING DEFINITIONS

Appraisal is known as ―an approach to exploring, describing, and explaining the way language is used to evaluate, to adopt stances, to construct textual personas and to manage interpersonal positions and relationships‖ (White, 2001, p 1) Appraisal is also

―one of three major discourse semantic resources construing interpersonal meaning‖ (Martin & White, 2005, p 34) Appraisal has three semantic areas ―Attitude, Engagement, and Graduation.‖

Attitude is concerned with our feelings, including emotional reactions (so- called

Affect), judgements of behavior (Judgement) and evaluation of things (Appreciation).

Graduation is the semantics of scaling and the heart of Appraisal It values grading or scaling, either with regard to the interpersonal force which the speaker attaches to an utterance or with regard to the preciseness or sharpness of focus with which an item exemplifies a valeur relationship (White, 2001; Martin & White, 2005) Graduation itself is regionalized as Force and Focus.

Opinion articles are usually published in a newspaper or magazine that mainly reflects the author's opinion about a subject.

ORGANIZATION OF THE DISSERTATION

The dissertation is divided into seven chapters as follows:

Chapter 1 is Introduction, which describes the rationale for choosing the subject matter for research together with the aims and objectives of the study; identifies research questions as an orientation for the study The scope of the study is also stated in this chapter to show what areas the thesis would mainly focus on, then the significance and contribution of the thesis are clarified The last part of the chapter is the organization of the study.

Chapter 2 named Literature Review and Theoretical Background reviews the previous studies related to the research topic, and draws the theoretical background for the study These include the theoretical framework of Appraisal by Martin and White (2005) at the level of discourse semantics, language of evaluation, economic opinion discourses and journalistic voices.

Chapter 3 is Research Methods, which displays research methodology for the thesis.

It includes the research design, which serves as a framework for data collecting and analysis. The methods for collecting and processing data, as well as the procedures for data analysis, are also explained in this chapter Validity and reliability are discussed at the end of the chapter.

Chapter 4 presents the findings of the research of Attitude and Graduation in EEOAs In detail, it deals with analyzing, interpreting and finding the semantic features of Attitude and Graduation In addition, lexicogrammatical realizations of Attitude and Graduation in EEOAs are also examined in this chapter.

Chapter 5 gives way to a display of how language denoting Attitude and Graduation in VEOAs in terms of semantic features and lexicogrammatical realizations Then the discussion of what has been described is presented to confirm how language of evaluation in English is applied to analyze Vietnamese discourse.

Chapter 6 presents a contrastive analysis of differences and similarities in terms of semantic features and lexicogrammatical realizations of Attitude and Graduation between EEOAs and VEOAs The chapter begins with some comparisons in relation to the deployment of Attitude in EEOAs and VEOAs, and the same procedure for the case of Graduation is presented in the second section of the chapter The reasons for differences and similarities in terms of semantic features and lexicogrammatical realizations of Attitude and Graduation between EEOAs and VEOAs are also mentioned to clarify the issue.

Chapter 7 is Conclusions It draws the conclusions of the dissertation and several implications for teaching and learning relating to the Appraisal framework to analyze evaluation language Some suggestions for further research are also provided in this chapter.

CHAPTER SUMMARY

The first chapter provides an overview of the dissertation by starting with the rationale for selecting the issue which concerns the necessity of investigating the realizations of Attitude and Graduation in EEOAs and VEOAs, then it is followed with the thesis‘s aims and objectives Three interrelated research questions which involve semantic features and lexicogrammatical realizations of Attitude and Graduation in EEOAs and VEOAs as well as their similarities and differences in two target languages are established In addition, this chapter discusses the study‘s scope as well as the thesis‘ theoretical, methodological, and practical contributions The chapter also explains how the dissertation is organized so that readers can get a rough idea of what the dissertation is about.

10 LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL

REVIEW OF PREVIOUS STUDIES

This section covers previous research on Appraisal; Appraisal on media texts in general and on opinion texts in particular; language of evaluation and its realizations on journal discourse, and research gaps will be identified in the existing literature A variety of necessary information characteristic of the reviewed studies for setting up a theoretical framework is presented, concerning the research type, research methods, research objectives, and key findings These will allow the researcher to address the gaps and variables that need to be measured in the research questions.

Appraisal framework is an interpersonal meaning resource at discourse semantics level developed from the theory ofSystemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) Appraisal is used for the analysis of evaluation by the speakers/writers In other words, it helps with ―exploring, describing and explaining the way language is used to evaluate, to adopt stances, to construct textual personas and to manage interpersonal positioning and relationships‖ (White, 2000) Appraisal is the most fully developed model of evaluation, which has been elaborated by Martin and his associates (Iedema, Feez & White, 1994; Christie & Martin, 1997; Coffin, 1997; Eggin & Slade, 1997; Martin, 1992, 2000,

2002, 2003; Martin & Plum, 1997; Martin & Rose, 2003; Martin & White, 2005; White, 2002, 2003a, 2003b), especially White (2001) maintained an extensive website dedicated to the model (www.grammatics.com/ appraisal) which has served both as an introduction to the theory for many scholars and as a test base for a number of recent refinements and extensions.

Prior to the development of the Appraisal framework by Martin and White (2005), a substantial amount of study was conducted on evaluative language from a number of different perspectives, with various terms, such as ‗affect‘ (Ochs, 1989; Ochs & Schieffelin, 1989), ‗modality‘ (Halliday 1994), ‗evaluation‘ (Hunston, 2011; Hunston & Sinclair, 2000; Hunston & Thompson, 2000; Thompson & Alba- Juez, 2014), or ‗appraisal‘ (Martin, 2000; Martin & Rose, 2003; Martin

& White, 2005; White, 2004) According to Thompson (2008), Martin‘s model of Appraisal has been favoured in developing interpersonal meanings which have not been adequately explored within SFL and simultaneously, he shows some critical issues in the attitudinal systems In his terms, ―Appraisal analysis can provide an economical handle on central aspects of meaning in text which other forms of analysis would not be able to capture‖ (Thompson, 2008, p 174) White (2015) indicated that the appraisal framework provides an account of ―evaluative meaning‐making,‖ specifically those communicative resources by which speakers/writers convey positive and negative attitudes, strengthen or weaken those attitudinal assessments and position themselves via actual or potential respondents It provides a delicate taxonomy of attitudinal meanings that attends to such issues as the basis on which the positive/negative assessment is being made, its target, what is at stake socially, and whether the assessment is explicitly or implicitly conveyed Appraisal itself is regionalized as three interacting domains – ―Attitude‖,

―Engagement‖, and ―Graduation‖ Attitude is concerned with our feelings, including emotional reactions as ―Affect‖,judgements of behaviour as ―Judgement‖ and evaluation of things as ―Appreciation‖ Engagement deals with sourcing attitudes and the play of voices around opinions in discourse Graduation attends to grading phenomena whereby feelings are amplified and categories blurred In this study, I also prefer Appraisal model as the most systematic and influential framework currently available for theorizing evaluation.

Appraisal theory has attracted a worldwide following The Appraisal framework has been applied to explore the evaluative aspect of language in a wide range of genres It is worth mentioning a number of appraisal framework-based studies, including academic writing discourse (Hood, 2004; Hood & Martin, 2007); public text (Fuoli, 2012); reading science (Martin,

1995, 1997, 2000); science discourse (Fuller, 1998; Veel, 1998), especially, media texts (Coffin & O‘Halloran, 2005; Coffin, 2006; Dreyfus & Jones, 2010; Iedema, Feez, & White, 1994; Millar & Hunston, 2015; Thompson, White & Kitley, 2008; White, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2004, 2006) that are related to this current study.

Iedema et al (1994) observed a correlation between evaluation and stance (an appraisal resource), and journalistic styles and voices, which emerge out of genre-based considerations They stressed that Affect, Judgment, and Appreciation are sources for negotiating emotions, and that graduation provides the ability to increase or decrease the intensity of emotions. Academic authors can uphold their solidarity within a community of researchers while also building a distinction and, as a result, a place for their own study by using a variety of resources, namely Force and Focus, to analyze the phenomena inferentially It makes it possible for academic writers to balance the seemingly incompatible demands of impartiality and critique The integration of various graduated meanings, such as those previously discussed as ―vague-ness‖ and ―downtoners,‖ is made possible by approaching a discourse analysis from a semantic perspective of graduation Most importantly, this approach accounts for the realizations of these meanings across a variety of grammatical systems These studies act as a root for further studies on implicit Attitude realized by Graduation in journalistic discourses In the subjective text, at least some of the author's value judgements are explicitly revealed in the language In contrast, the strictly "objective" text is constructed in such a way that there is no explicit linguistic evidence of the author's value judgements.

According to Vo Duy Duc (2017), appraisal has become a framework for examining how language is used to evaluate, take positions, create textual personas, and manage interpersonal positioning and relationships for more than 20 years It was created by a group of linguists in Australia as an extension of Halliday's linguistic theories The study intends to present an overview of the appraisal framework and look at how it is applied both nationally and internationally in discourse analysis, particularly multimodal discourse analysis However, this framework is still very new in Vietnam It was discovered that appraisal has been widely used as a framework for inquiry into interpersonal meaning given in a variety of genres For individuals interested in conducting discourse analysis in the context of appraisal, the findings can serve as a helpful resource.

Based on the system of linguistic resources for appraisal in English mapped by Martin and White (2005), Ngo and Unsworth (2011) identified differences between Vietnamese and English in the system of personal reference They described the intricate system of personal reference in Vietnamese, including (1) common nouns-kinship terms, (2) people's names and (3) personal pronouns They also discussed how the choice of a person referring term implies an evaluative meaning of the addressors towards the addressees and the third party in certain contexts This discussion indicated how the Vietnamese system of person reference contributes to appraisal resources in Vietnamese.

It is possible to assess Vietnamese appraisal materials using the English appraisal framework An exploratory study by Tran and Thompson (2008) that analyzes the language of assessment in Vietnamese written text focuses on how aVietnamese journalist assesses the US administration in the event of an invasion of Iraq The investigation was limited to a single article, so it is unable to produce the characteristics of Vietnamese as a written language The limited scope of this study leaves a gap in the literature for a systemic functional linguistic study of Vietnamese with respect to interpersonal meaning in general, and more specifically the language of appraisal and that of graduation in particular.

There is a growing trend of using media texts in adult education contexts and institutions With specific text structures, sentence patterns, and visual aids, media texts are created and designed to make specific types of information relevant to particular audiences ―Media language has always attracted the attention of linguists‖, (Bell, 1995) Accordingly, evaluative language in such gerne can be studied from several approaches, especially from an appraisal approach.

2.1.2.1 Objectivity and Subjectivity of Media texts

Subjectivity and objectivity in journalism are important for maintaining a fair and balanced approach when reporting on different topics These characters have been realized via a wide range of appraisal resources White (2004) discussed subjectivity as a point of view, and the appraisal framework was used to frame some of his work In his discussion of the contrast between objective and subjective claims in media discourses, White showed how the latter can be made without explicitly expressing one's own opinions by association, metaphor, or inference Such forms of opinion are vital to distill in sentiment analysis, but they are also particularly challenging because they depend on world knowledge that is not available to most.

Thompson, White, and Kitley (2008) proposed the Appraisal framework to explore the language of hard news reporting across languages and cultures expressing authorial ―neutrality‖ with regard to analysis of journalistic discourse and the associated notion of ―objectivity.‖ According to the study, authorial

―neutrality‖ can be observed in the hard news reporting of a variety of languages, but only when ―neutrality‖ is regarded to be a tactical restraint of a particular subset of attitudinal language The findings showed that few instances of explicit authorial Judgement and Affect with the reporter voice in the hard news due to the nature of the gerne Meanwhile, Pound (2010), in the light of Appraisal theory, made a comparative analysis of authorial attitude explore to what extent the most impersonal ‗reporter voice‘, as identified by Martin and White (2005) in English hard-news reported in the press, is present in Italian reporting The similarities and variations in reporting techniques were discussed, and it was mentioned that possible underlying social and cultural factors might be involved Nevertheless, these studies have not paid its attention and examined in a corpus of opinion pieces.

SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS

Systemic functional linguistics (hereafter SFL), a functionally-based theory, has proved to be a powerful tool for the analysis of text The main concerns of SFL are: (1) how do people use language? and (2) how is language structured for use? (Eggins, 1994) answered the first question, systemic linguists suggest that people negotiate texts (write or talk language) in order to make meanings with each other, which means the main function of language is a semantic one The early development of the theory was formulated in the 1960s by Halliday and his partners (Halliday, 1970, 1974, 1978, 1979; Halliday et al., 1964; Halliday & Hasan, 1976) and later works (Halliday, 1994, 2004, Halliday & Matthiessen, 1999, 2009) While traditional grammar mainly focuses on forms rather than meanings, SFL proposes that different types of meanings in language are realised by more concrete language layers (the language stratification), which then construe social and cultural contexts (the contextual stratification) Figure 2.1 represents the idea of language and contextual strata.

Figure 2.1 The language stratification and meta-functions

SFL linguists consider that language constructs three different types of meanings, including ideational, interpersonal and textual, which are, in turn, determined by the social context (register) and the cultural context (genre) of language use. Particularly, SFL deals with registers in terms of three variables or parameters known as semiotic functions These are Field, Tenor and Mode (Halliday, 1978) Field is the area of external reality with which the text deals Tenor concerns the relationships between those taking part in the linguistic act Mode is the means through which the communication takes place.

The semantic component of the SFL model is construed in terms of three metafunctions: ideational, interpersonal and textual The ideational metafunction is that part of the meaning that concerns the way external reality is represented in the text In informal terms, it might be regarded as the content of the message, and is probably what many think of first when they refer to a semantic component In other words, it is intimately concerned with the processes involved, whether they are actions, events or states, the entities involved in these processes, and if mentioned the circumstances within which they take place The interpersonal metafunction addresses the relationships that exist between the speaker and his addressee(s), and between the speaker and his message The textual metafunction is that part of the potential meaning which makes a text into a text, as opposed to a simple string of words or clauses It thus involves phenomena such as thematic structure, information structure, and cohesion.

The three types of meanings are realised by the language strata of phonology/graphonology, lexico-grammar and discourse semantics, with phonology/graphology as the most concrete statum and discourse semantics as the most abstract. Discourse semantics deals with the meaning beyond clause, or in other words, at text level At this level, interpersonal meaning is concerned with a variety of discourse organisations such as Negotiation (dealing with how turns are organised into exchanges to create speech functions), Involvement (dealing with non-gradable resources for negotiating tenor relations), and Appraisal (dealing with expressions of feelings, judgements of people‘s behaviours and appreciation of things) (Martin & White, 2005, p. 33) Among the three interpersonal meaning resources at discourse semantic level, the current study is interested in Appraisal, particularly how it is realized in business newspaper articles.

Recently, Martin (2014, 2016, 2018) and Matthiessen & Guo (2020) again have made some revisions on the overall theoretical architecture of SFL by way of contextualizing the focus on interpersonal grammar Interestingly, Martin(2014) is an autobiographical essay to reflect his training process in linguistics and affected factors to his interpretation and development of SFL theory The essay primarily focused on Martin‘s work on discourse semantics, genre, and appraisal (a discourse semantic framework for analysing feeling) Martin (2016) briefly illustrated recent development and drew a comment on the dialectic of theory and practice through which SFL positions itself as an applicable linguistics Martin (2018) also briefly introduced the systems of negotiation and appraisal realized through interpersonal grammar Matthiessen & Guo (2020) is an interview between Guo and Professor Matthiessen on some important SFL-related issues His sharing is extremely insightful and though-provoking, conductive to our understanding of the overall architecture of SFL.

APPRAISAL IN DISCOURSE SEMANTICS

Martin and his colleague have developed the theoretical framework of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) with significant contributions, including discourse semantics systems, appraisal frameworks, and genre relations According to Martin and White (2005), Appraisal focuses more on interpersonal meaning and the goal of developing an appraisal framework is to expand traditional accounts of speaker/writer evaluation, commitment, and knowledge, as well as to consider how the textual voice positions itself in relation to other voices and other positions in the discourse Therefore, rather than focusing on grammatical forms, this theoretical orientation encourages us to examine ―meanings in context and rhetorical effects‖ (Martin and White, 2005, p.94), and this is also the reason why Appraisal belong to discourse semantics, the third level of abstraction in language strata, concerning with meaning beyond lexicogrammar and phonology, in other words, beyond the clause Hunston and Thompson (2000, p.19) also stated that ―it is clear and all the studies about evaluation have said that evaluation tends to be found throughout the text rather than being confined to one particular part of it‖.

The discourse semantics level, according to Martin (2014, p 9), ―cannot be seen simply as a list of cohesive ties relating one grammatical unit to another, but as a further level of structure in its own right‖ Oteiza (2017) explained that each level of language is viewed as a set of complex meaning patterns – that is, each stratum (genre, register, discourse semantics,lexicogrammar, and phonology) is built up of patterns of patterns from the immediately lower level, according to the concept of meta redundancy When dealing with appraisal, this concept is especially important since it allows for the transition from a grammatical perspective on assessment to a complementing perspective based on the rhetorical effect of evaluative lexis as texts unfold As a result, the appraisal system allows for the generalization of a variety of lexicogrammatical realizations that connect sensations in connection to one another, allowing for the description of prosodies of evaluation in relation to genre (Martin, 2014) Following this premise, the appraisal framework adopts a conceptual approach to evaluation, taking into account both grammatical and lexical codification, as well as their patterning, or valorative prosody, across the discourse.

Discourse semantic systems are organized by metafunction following the SFL paradigm, allowing us to

―reinterpret, from an interpersonal perspective, resources that are experientially constituted in lexicogrammar‖ (Martin, 2014,p.19), and to explore them, taking into account how attitude is realized in the discourse in a prosodic or cumulative matter At the discourse semantics level, Martin and White (2005, p.10) stated that this perspective is essential to understand grammatical metaphor which is ―the process whereby meaning is cooked twice as it were, introducing a degree of tension between wording and meaning‖.

APPRAISAL FRAMEWORK

The Appraisal framework consists of language resources in English, expressing the concept of comparison, subjectivity and values, and more logically is divided into three sub-systems: Attitude, Graduation and Engagement Attitude deals with people‘s emotions and opinions about other people or things Engagement is concerned with the ways in which resources such as projection, modality, polarity, concession and various comment adverbials position the speaker/writer with respect to the value position being advanced and with respect to potential responses to that value position – by quoting or reporting, acknowledging a possibility, denying, countering, affirming and so on, and it is specified via two headings

‗heterogloss‘ and ‗monogloss‘ Graduation involves language resources to amplify both Attitude and the degree ofEngagement In the scope of the study, among these three semantic domains, the thesis mainly focuses on Attitude and Graduation, and they are presented in detail as follows.

Attitude is one of the three key resources of the Appraisal framework It is concerned with evaluating things or phenomena, people‘s personalities, and feelings These viewpoints may be the author‘s own or those of a third party (that is external voice) This perspective demonstrates that attitude is separated into three sub-systems: Affect (emotion), Judgment (ethical), and Appreciation (aesthetics) On one hand, the distinction between Affect and the other two categories, as well as the interplay between these attitudinal modes, is ―quite unproblematic,‖ and on the other, ―a fine one‖ (Bednarek,

2006, p.32; White, 2006; White, 2005) Attitudinal meanings can be compared and intensified, as will be explored in detail in the many parts under attitude and graduation However, while Appraisal theory research has recognized that attitudinal meanings can be classified into three broad semantic domains (White, 2007), Affect has been argued to be at ―the heart of these regions since it is the expressive resource we are born with and embody physiologically from almost the moment of birth‖ (Martin & White 2005, p.42) This argument shows the primacy of Affect amongst the three attitudinal resources The following outline in Figure 2.2 as adopted from Martin and White (2005) indicates how affect is at the heart of institutionalized meanings (Judgement and Appreciation)

Figure 2.2 Judgement and Appreciation as institutionalized Affect

The figure shows the interplay between affect and the other two attitudinal sub-groupings Their detailed explorations are presented in the following sections.

The account of the interpersonal mode of economic opinion articles set out here relies on the work of Martin & White (2005) on the discourse semantics of Affect Affect deals with resources for construing emotional reactions In other words, Affect is related to emotions in reacting to behaviour, text, process, or phenomena Un/happiness/, in/security, dis/satisfaction, and dis/inclination are the four major sets of emotions of Affect Affect is graded towards the higher valued end or lower valued end of the scale of intensity (e.g dislike-hate-detest) In addition, Affect involves irrealis or realis stimulus. Specifically, Affect is concerned with registering positive and negative feelings as happy or sad, confident or anxious, interested or bored as they are expressed implicitly or explicitly in text in relation to a response to things, person or happening Martin & White (2005) mentioned that the evaluation carried out through Affect Appraisal can be

―Authorial Affect‖ or ―Non-Authorial Affect‖ A framework of six factors to classify Affect is presented as follows. a Un/Happiness

The melancholy, hate, happiness, and love variables all fall under the un/happiness category When we think of emotions, the un/happiness set of meanings is typically the first that comes to mind It involves pleasant or sad moods, as well as the ability to focus these feelings at a Trigger by loving or rejecting it. b In/Security

Anxiety, fear, confidence, and trust are all emotions related to eco-social well-being that are covered by the in/security variable Our sentiments of calm and worry in regard to our surroundings, including, of course, the people that share them with us, are referred to as in/security The sensations here are related to ―mothering‖ in the house – oriented to protection from the world outside – in stereotypically gendered groups (or not). c Dis/Satisfaction

Ennui, displeasure, curiosity, and respect are all emotions associated with telos (the pursuit of goals) and are included in the dis/satisfaction variable Our sentiments of accomplishment and frustration in regard to the activities in which we are engaged, including our roles as both participants and spectators, are referred to as dis/satisfaction The sensations here are connected with 'fathering' (and mentorship in general) in stereotypically gendered settings – tailored to learning and accomplishment. d Dis/Inclination

The dis/inclination variable represents fear and desire-related emotional reactions It's also known as Irrealis Affect in the appraisal theory, and it always seems to involve an emotional Trigger – the phenomenon causing that emotion.

However, there exists confusion in the network of Affect proposed by Martin and White (2005) as well as in the new network modified by Bednarek (2008) when the author suggested new terms proposed for the subcategories of

―In/security‖, namely ―disquiet-quiet‖ and ―distrust-trust‖ Taking account of these on-going issues, an adapted composite Affect system, which is a combination of both Martin and White (2005) and Bednarek (2008) will be used in the coding scheme for data analysis of the present study In the adapted Affect system above, no changes were made toUn/happiness and Dis/satisfaction, but Dis/inclination and In/security were modified In Dis/inclination, Martin and White‘s sub-categories of Fear and Desire are now replaced by Non-Desire and Desire Within the subcategory of Insecurity (with the original options of Disquiet and Surprise), continued use is made of Disquiet and Surprised is replaced with Distrust In the subcategory of Security, the original options of Confidence and Trust continue to be used The Affect system for this study is exemplified in Figure 2.3.

(source: Martin & White, 2005, p 51) e Positive and Negative Affect

Are the feelings generally regarded by the culture as positive (good vibes that are nice to experience) or negative (bad vibes that should be avoided)? is the question posed by this variable in the Affect typology.

Table 2.1 Examples of types of Affect

Dis/inclination miss, long for, yearn for, … wary, fearful, terrorized, …

Un/happiness cheerful, buoyant, jubilant; like, love, adore,

… sad, melancholy, despondent; cut- up, heart-broken

… broken- hearted, heavy- hearted, sick at heart; sorrowful … grief-stricken, woebegone … dejected …; dejected, joyless, dreary, …

In/security together, confident, assured; comfortable, confident, … uneasy, anxious, freaked out; startled, surprised, astonished, …

Dis/satisfaction involved, absorbed, engrossed; satisfied, pleased, chuffed/ impressed, … flat, stale, jaded; cross, angry, furious; bored with, sick of, fed up with….

(source: Martin & White, 2005, p 49-51) f Authorial and Non-Authorial Affect

Instances of Authorial Affect (1st-person) involve the writer/speaker indicating how they have responded emotionally to the person, thing, happening or situation being evaluated Obviously, they thereby take responsibility for that attitudinal value assessment Such emotional assessments reside, of course, entirely in the individual subjectivity of the speaker/writer It is an entirely personalized and individualized mode of evaluation and various rhetorical consequences follow from this Through such ―authorial Affect‖, the speaker/writer strongly foregrounds his/her subjective presence in the communicative process.

Regarding instances of Non-Authorial Affect (2nd and 3rd person) then, the writer is the source of the emotion by which the evaluation is conveyed and hence takes some responsibility for that evaluation But it is also necessary to consider instances where it is not the author's emotions which are described but those of other human individuals or groups.

Judgment is defined by Martin & White (2005, p.42) as an element that

―deals with attitude towards behaviour, which we admire or criticize, praise or condemn.‖ In other words, Judgment is concerned with resources for assessing behaviour according to various normative principles Being a system of attitudinal positioning, Judgment serves to evaluate human behavior positively and negatively with reference to that participant‘s acts or dispositions.

Judgment is subdivided into two broad categories by Martin & White (2005, p.65): (i) those dealing with ―social esteem‖ and (ii) those regarding ―social sanction‖.

SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS DESCRIPTION OF

In the light of systemic functional linguistic, Vietnamese grammar has been described properly by a number of authors By applying the grammatical model to analyze the structures of Vietnamese language, Cao Xuan Hao (1991) and then (2004) argued that Vietnamese is a Topic-Comment language, and this idea is similar to Halliday's functional Theme-Rheme framework In details, it is common to find that when the Vietnamese express themselves, they often "produce a topic and say something about that topic or within the range of that topic" (1991, p 79) Like Halliday's Theme-Rheme organization,this means that a sentence in Vietnamese can be divided into two parts: Topic and Comment where the Topic functions as the departure of the sentence, followed by the Comment, resembling SFL's Rheme This Topic/Comment structure suggests thatVietnamese expresses textual metafunctional meanings using the system of Theme/Rheme as detailed by Halliday Cao‘s finding gave a start for further debate on the structure of the Vietnamese clause and encouraged others to investigate Vietnamese from an SFL perspective The introduction of this theory by Cao also provided a base for this study's intention of analyzing Vietnamese language using SFL's appraisal framework since it explained well the relation between the Appraised (the Topic) and the Attitude (the Comment).

In the Vietnamese version, Hoang Van Van (2002, 2005) also drew significant attention to Vietnamese grammar from a SFL perspective Hoang not only introduced basic notions related to the description and analysis of the experiential grammar but also built a detailed framework in order to understand transitivity and differentiate three process types in Vietnamese, which, according to Hoang's model, include: (1) ―doing‖ process (which included material and behavioural); (2) ―projecting‖ process (which consists of mental and verbal), and

(3) ―being‖ process (which can be either relational or existential) Over the years, there has been an increasing need to read the book in its original English, Van has revised and updated some parts which were mentioned in Hoang (2012) His study opened a chance of testing if the semantic aspect of Vietnamese can also be explained by using SFL's semantic framework, Appraisal In addition, Hoang (2004) translated Halliday‘s book into Vietnamese, making a great contribution to facilitate understanding SFL-related issues for Vietnamese linguists and scholars Especially, Hoang (2014) has been concerned with the notion of clauses in Vietnamese According to Van, like English and many languages of the world, the clause in Vietnamese is the most important grammatical category which can be conceptualized from the point view of stratification, rank, and metafunctions These three dimensions can be regarded as valid criteria for defining and recognizing the clause in Vietnamese.

Thai Minh Duc (1998, 2004) is another pioneer using functional theory so as to describe Vietnamese grammar, and metafunctionally investigate the textual, interpersonal and experiential meaning Thai illustrated the ways the systems of theme, mood, and transitivity are realized in Vietnamese The grammatical structure of language‘s experiential metafunction is known as transitivity in SFL According to Martin et al (1970), experiential meaning is reflected by the way a process is set up, participants, and the surrounding circumstances Circumstantial elements add information about time (when), place (where), manner (how), and reason/cause (why, for what/who) They can be probed with where, why, how, and when For obvious reasons, elements which answer a who, which, or what probe are not circumstantial elements, but participants In Vietnamese, beginning with the observation that every Vietnamese clause includes the ―does what‖ elements, Thai (2004) provided a sketch of the representative aspect of the clause as having a verbal group with various processes types which come after the ―whom/to whom‖ element – the participants, which might or might not be supplemented by the circumstances The four primary process categories in Vietnamese, according to Thai (2004), are ―material, mental, verbal, and relational.‖ Material processes in Vietnamese are acts that take place, but mental processes entail experiences of consciousness like seeing, thinking, or experiencing The arrangement of a Senser along with a process and a phenomenon, either with or without, defines the mental clauses Our experience of verbal processes like stating or symbolizing is constructed by verbal clauses Lastly, relational processes are described as ―having, being at, and being‖ processes Thai (2004) claimed that there are two types of relational clauses in Vietnamese: existential and expanding This could be the reason why Thai categorization lacks a distinct Existential process type, unlike English transitivity by Halliday Thai explained that existential clauses have only one participant, whereas expanding clauses include two or more, in order to distinguish between the two categories of relational processes.

In Vietnamese, Thai's study serves as a foundation for this investigation in terms of identifying where in the clause and inside which metafunction meanings of appraisal may be positioned The Appraised is identified by theme Mood categories identify and clarify the ways in which authorial position is used to oppose assessments Furthermore, it illustrated how the lexico- grammar realizes the semantics, or conceivable meanings, in any language Appraisal Theory looks at the semantics of evaluation; thus knowing how it is realized grammatically identifies where and by what grammatical resources in the clause these meanings are construed.

To put it briefly, Halliday‘s SFL theory has been used by several Vietnamese linguists to characterize Vietnamese. These studies have shown that an SFL approach can account for Vietnamese They offer a starting point for further Vietnamese study using the SFL framework In terms of Appraisal, it is evident that little work in this area has been done This study involves the application of Appraisal Theory in order to understand the interpersonal meaning of evaluation within the set of opinion texts.

APPRAISAL RESOURCES IN VIETNAMESE

It is possible to analyze Appraisal resources in Vietnamese by applying the English Appraisal framework by Martin and White (2005) This is evident from the studies by Tran and Thomson (2008), Vo Duy Duc (2011), Nguyen Thi Thu Hien (2014), Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan and Nguyen Thi Huong Lan (2020) However, due to some distinguishing features of Vietnamese, some more resources can realize Attitude and Graduation in Vietnamese.

By Hoàng Văn Vân (2002), in Vietnamese, Cú, known as clause in SFG, is the highest grammatical unit to express the speaker‘s experience toward the external and internal world, the speaker‘s particpation in a situation and a message in a communicative event In terms of lexicogrammar, cú or clause can be conceptualized with the transitivity system in configurating the meaning of experience through processes By Hoàng Văn Vân, process is the key concept to identify clause in Vietnamese Accordingly, the functional components of cú or clause in Vietnamese can be actualized as process codified by a verb group, adjective group, participants codified by nominal group, adjective group.

Ngo Thi Bich Thu (2013) demonstrated that Modal particles can be a source for realizing Attitude in Vietnamese Function words classified as ―particles‖ are those that do not fall under any of the inflected grammatical categories such as pronouns, articles, verbs, or nouns In English, Particles can serve as fillers or discourse markers like well, ah, and anyway, but they are usually employed to aid in the encoding of concepts like negation and mood The

―particles‖ in the Vietnamese language can be categorized in different ways depending on whether one is looking at traditional grammar or functional grammar According to Diep (2004), "particles" in Vietnamese can be classified into two groups based on their functional grammar: interpersonal and experiential The meanings of polarity, time and tenses, ability, homogeneity, and degree of intensification are encoded by experiential particles (Diep, 2004) Several of these experience particles contain evaluative meanings that fall under the Graduation category of the Appraisal framework These meanings are comparable to English grammatical isolated lexemes such as ―rất‖ (very) and ―khá‖ (very, rather) Other interpersonal particles, specifically Modal particles outside of Mood structure, including ―được, phải, and mất,‖ convey significant evaluative meanings in addition to the Final Polite Particle, which is not a part of the Mood structure (Diep, 2004).

Particles ―được‖, ―mất‖, ―phải‖ ―coi‖ have the potential to express a number of evaluative meanings such as the meaning of Affect (Dis/Inclination, Dis/Satisfaction), Judgement (Normality and Capacity) and Appreciation (Quality) Some examples of this are: a Mặc dù tác động của dịch Covid-19 vẫn còn đang gây ảnh hưởng xấu đến các nền kinh tế trên toàn thế giới, nhưng ở một số nơi con người đang dần kiểm soát tốt được dịch bệnh, như Việt Nam là một điển hình… (V4) b Mấy trăm nghìn tỷ đồng vốn đầu tư công hiện chưa giải ngân được, nếu bơm được "dòng máu" này vào nền kinh tế sẽ hỗ trợ rất nhiều cho xã hội, doanh nghiệp và toàn bộ nền kinh tế, thúc đẩy sản xuất (V23) c Thương hiệu Việt biến mất, giữ được tên thì cũng ―hồn‖ Thái, Hàn, Nhật, Trung Quốc…(V33) d Vì với doanh nghiệp, thời gian là tiền bạc, là yếu tố quyết định đến việc có nắm bắt được cơ hội kinh doanh hay để vuột mất Thế nên, đừng để nợ của Nhà nước mà người dân và doanh nghiệp phải trả giá (V35) e Nếu doanh nghiệp Việt vẫn tiếp tục làm gia công như trước, không tạo ra giá trị gia tăng lớn hơn ở Việt Nam thì sản phẩm sẽ bị coi là không đủ tiêu chuẩn xuất khẩu sang thị trường Mỹ (V24)

Diep Quang Ban (1998) pointed out that the majority of Vietnamese words have meanings that fall into both grammatical and lexical categories In contrast to English, Vietnamese is isolating and monosyllabic In other words, each word is a distinct sound, and it does not have inflections Thus, three criteria are taken into consideration when identifying Vietnamese words: (i) generalized meaning, (ii) possibilities of combination, and (iii) syntactic functions.

Every word class has a generalized meaning feature that sets it apart from the others In detail, adjectives refer to the traits of things, verbs refer to acts, and nouns convey a sense of referring to things Due to Vietnamese words‘ inability to alter form, they can combine with other words to indicate their realizations An example of this would be adjectives, which can be coupled with and placed after rất, quá or before lắm, quá Another example is the word hành động, which may be used as a verb and a noun As a verb, it will take đã as an element related to the action‘s timing, but as a noun, it can be preceded by a quantifier like những Sentence components like the subject, predicate, and complement demonstrate the third criterion of syntactic function Adjectives, verbs, and nouns can all be used to realize the subject and complement This criterion aids in determining the word order within clauses and phrases.

The third criterion of syntactic function is manifested as constituent elements of sentences such as a subject, predicate and complement Adjectives, verbs, and nouns can all be used to realize the subject and complement This criterion aids in determining the word order within clauses and phrases The criteria play a prominent role in identifying words and words in phrases or clauses However, it can be argued that the second criterion provides the framework for establishing phrases among the criteria This makes sense as potential combinations can be used to build word order rules Typical examples of this include the cases of verbs and adjectives Verb phrases like rất chạy, hơi đi never have terms like khí or rất as pre- heads of action verbs.

Lắm or quá is never post-heads of action verbs, but they can be those of state verbs, verbs of feeling or thinking such as thương quá, nghĩ ngợi quá, nể quá, thương lắm, hiểu lắm (Diệp Quang Ban, 2006, p 89) Moreover, quá can be pre- heads of these verbs such as quá nể, quá thương, quá hiểu but lắm cannot operate such a combination (e.g., lắm nể*, lắm thương*, lắm hiểu*) What is more, such words of frequencies as thường, hay, hiếm, etc can be pre-heads of verbs.

Regarding adjectives, we can easily recognize them in cases with rất being combined with them or preceding an adjective phrase and even relational adjectives such as rất Việt Nam, tác phong rất công nhân (Diệp Quang Ban, 1998, p 19), and adjectives cannot combine with rất when they are unmarked ones These adjectives cannot also combine with hơi or khí, for instance, rất công*, rất tư*, rất chung* Such words as rất, tuyệt, cực kì, hơi, khí, quá can be added to adjectives as pre- heads and lắm, quá, cực kì, cực, tuyệt, quá added as post-heads to form adjective phrases, for example, đẹp lắm, đẹp cực kì, đẹp tuyệt, đẹp quá (Diệp Quang Ban, 2006, p 104).

There are differences in the labeling of some word classes between English and Vietnamese In detail, from the functional grammar perspective, Nguyen Tai

Can (1998) pointed out that the resource for describing the manner of an action is adjectives and adjectival groups rather than an adverb or adverbial phrase To illustrate, in the verbal group ―chạy nhanh‖ (chạy: run, nhanh: quick – run quickly),

―nhanh‖ was classified as an adjective instead of an adverb This view was supported by Ngo Thi Bich Thu (2013) when explaining that it is because Vietnamese words retain their form when having different functions or tenses Since

―nhanh‖ describes a speed-related quality, it is always used as an adjective in Vietnamese, whether to describe a thing or a process I also advocate this argument and the current study will adopt the view of Nguyễn Tai Can (1998).

There are some further resources for expressing Graduation in Vietnamese, including Compounds and Reduplicatives as suggested by Ngo Thi Bich Thu (2013) Compounds refer to the type of multi-syllable words where the constituents are not partially or completely phonetically duplicated, but the constituents are more often semantically related instead A Reduplicative; however, has phonetically similar parts.

Two types of Compound considered in this study are Iterative and Repetitive Compound Each component of an Iterative compound has a distinct meaning, which the constituents combine to form a synthesized meaning for the entire word. Some examples of this type of word are ―tốt đẹp‖ (good beautiful), and ―mong chờ‖ (expect wait) (Diep, 2004) When Iterative Compound is mapped into the Graduation resources as stated by Martin and White (2005),

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

The aim of the thesis is to investigate the language used for denoting Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese economic opinion articles There are different approaches to this issue, but Appraisal approach is applied in this thesis The theoretical framework for the thesis can be shown in Figure 2.7.

Figure 2.7 Theoretical framework for the thesis

In order to examine the semantic features of Attitude and Graduation in EEOAs and VEOAs, an Appraisal framework at discourse semantics level by Martin and White (2005) was deployed Among three semantic domains of Appraisal framework, Attitude, Graduation as well as their subtypes are the focus of the investigation In terms of lexicogrammatical realizations of Attitude and Graduation in separated English and Vietnamese economic opinion articles, indicators in view of Appraisal Theory (Martin & White, 2005) and Systemic Functional Grammar (Halliday, 2004) serve as the foundation for the analysis Then the study makes the contrastive analysis to find out the similarities and differences in terms of semantic features and lexicogrammatical realizations of Attitude and Graduation between English economic opinion articles and Vietnamese economic opinion articles.

AN OVERVIEW OF ECONOMIC DISCOURSES

Economic discourse is defined in scientific literature as the creating texts process while taking into account socio- cultural, psychological, and pragmatic variables It's also a deliberate social action including people‘s interaction and cognitive mechanisms (Erreygers & Jacobs, 2005) Furthermore, it is considered as a set of economic speech acts in the form of oral and written texts that represent the reality of the economic world As a result, economic discourse is distinguished by the existence of specific extralinguistic as well as features of economic text In addition, Dudley-Evans & Henderson (1990) proposed that economic discourse is research that uses scientific methods concerning prediction, control, reproducible experimentation, objectivity and specificity of mathematics.

Chawla (2001, p.119) described the importance of economic discourses, stated that:

The predominance of economic affairs in everyday life, the preoccupation with productive efficiency, and the maximisation of the satisfaction of a person's needs through the purchase of commodities is closely related with the fascination with counting and measuring The wellbeing of society is measured in terms of an uninterrupted growth of consumer goods and permanently rising levels of production and consumption.

In terms of extralinguistic qualities, it is worth noting that discourse participants play a unique role According to Benveniste (1974), the most important element of discourse in general is its relationship to individual communicative participants, and in economics discourse in particular, participation is also one of its main characteristics The economy involves a wide range of practices such as business, finance and credit, accounting and auditing, tax and insurance, and trade; therefore, the participants in economics discourse are experts in a variety of fields.

Therefore, when it comes to economics as language, Warren (1989, p.7) pointed out that economics discourse as scientific texts write about the economy, uses ―language to describe, interpret, and explain the economy, that is, use one artifact to write about another artifact‖ McCloskey (1986) urged that economics ―is very much a system of metaphors‖ In other words, authors often employ rhetorical devices such as metaphors, comparisons, or analogies, to increase their credibility It is conclusive that the attention of economic discourse ―is directed to the art of persuasion‖ (Warren, 1989, p.3), so the typical feature of such kind is the use of rhetorical devices including comparison, contrast, metaphor, metonymy; and language of ordinary speech, technical jargon, or mathematics.

ECONOMIC OPINION ARTICLES AND LANGUAGE OF OPINION

2.9.1 Opinion articles and economic opinion articles

An opinion is considered from two perspectives Firstly, opinion is regarded as a method (a way to evaluate and discuss an event or phenomenon, to arrive at a full and profound awareness of that issue and the things it suggests) is used in all forms of publication such as in the news - in the form of quoting the opinions of others; in editorials, and commentary Secondly, Opinion is seen as a genre of mainstream journalism, of a general nature, which includes elements of explanation, analysis and even evidence.

Bell (1991) identified that Opinion is a piece of specific writing in a specific column in a newspaper or magazine, expressing its assessment, judgment, and evaluation towards a phenomenon in society Opinion pieces ―explicitly evaluate and develop arguments‖ (White, 1998) This piece of writing is usually written by the senior journalists in the newspaper to ask readers to assess or evaluate a specific social, political, or economic phenomena which attract the whole nation‘s public attention.

In this column, the writer can tell his considered attitude and how the ideology to the readers freely Opinion column is one of the columns in the editorial page consisting of articles related to the public interest This column usually explains the news behind the scene, events discussing social, economic, and political issues As commentary writing, the column automatically contains the writer's assumption, thoughts, reasons and evidence to a particular issue All of the considerations then lead the writer to give positive or negative judgement toward the topic Generally, the articles in this column contain commentary, criticism, complaint, suggestion or problem solving that may argue, attack, and try to influence and persuade the readers to accept the writer's principle.

White (1998) also stated that ―In the media commentary, the role of the author is precisely to offer up subjective interpretations in which a central role is played by explicit value judgements, aesthetic evaluations, theories of cause-and- effect and so on.‖ Hoang Dinh Cuc and Duc Dung (2007) referred to opinion or commentary as a genre with the function of explaining, evaluating, and analyzing typical facts of life The object of the commentary can be events, phenomena, the current state of life that need to be clarified and oriented With the art of flexible reasoning by combining evidence, arguments, and attitude, opinion can convince the public to understand and act in the direction of the writers Commentary is a type of general argumentative essay that includes elements of explanation, analysis, and sometimes proof.

From the points of view mentioned above, the definition of an opinion paper can be presented: Opinion is a genre of journalism that belongs to the editorial group, in which the author uses his argumentative information system to explain, analyze issues of economic, political and social significance and then come to a judgment and assessment on that issue or maybe let the public self-assess.

As regards economic opinion articles, they give ―commentary on the people, companies and ideas shaping the world economy.‖ (slogan of New York Times), offer fair-minded, fact-checked coverage of political economy, economics, business, etc Economic opinion articles depict economic events, economics policies, then express objective/subjective attitudes to position and persuade readers.

The typical features and objectives of an opinion, according to Tran Quang (2000), are:

 Draw the reader‘s attention to significant new events emerging in the social life, and evaluate them;

 Put the commented event in relation to other events, discover the cause of that event;

 Predict the development of the commented event;

 Compare the necessary behavior and problem-solving practices with the help of examples and evidence.

Thus, one of the primary features of the opinion is not to take individual facts, but to consider them in many aspects and put them in a multifaceted relationship in order to discover the meaning of the issue In addition, the content of the opinion is to express opinions, publicly reveal the writer‘s political and ideological views on significant current events Readers can better understand the nature of events and occurrences thanks to the journalist‘s analysis and justification.

Since an opinion article in a national news outlet is a great way to get the author‘s ideas noticed by politicians, policy and other decision makers, and the wider public, such a kind has distinctive characteristics, including the choice of language use.

The facts, system of points and arguments in the argument need to be presented in a concise and expressive manner to attract and convince readers Writing about the theory of argument, Do Huu Chau (2007) has talked a lot about reasoning instructions as formal signs by which one can recognize the argument's orientation and argumentative properties of arguments. in an argumentative relationship These can be function words, modal particles such as: đã, mới, rồi, thôi, chỉ, là ít, là nhiều , and they contribute to change the argumentative value of the content In addition, coordinating conjunctions, subordinating conjunctions, adverbs, adverbs such as: nên, nhưng, vì, vả lại, hơn nữa, chẳng những mà còn, đã lại, etc combine 2 or more propositions into a single argument Thanks to these combinations, the information given becomes the argument or conclusion of an argument.

Vu Quang Hao (2007) pointed out that the reflection of opinion is always full of emotions, the emotional range of the political opinion is very large It is appreciation and joy, hatred and anger, contemplation and affection That‘s the appeal of analyzing events and making judgments about them With opinion, depending on creativity and personality, the writer often selects and uses verbal lexical units with meaningful nuances and expressive nuances to increase the attractiveness of the opinion.

Bargiela-Chiappini (2009) quoted Chew (2005) and Clyne (1994) that ―Indirect speech is not unique to Vietnam Indirectness may be more effective and polite in enhancing acceptance for a proposal rather than delivering acceptance with alacrity.‖

It is necessary to differentiate journalistic voices in written press since these demonstrate the degree to which authorial subjectivity or objectivity is presented in the provided newspaper articles Martin & White (2005) identified that the nature of the text determines the respective presence or absence of evaluative and subjective elements Accordingly, the author will make a decision on resorting to or refraining from lexical elements that reflect his or her own opinion and beliefs.

In the study of Martin & White (2005, p 173), two primary types of voices, including reporter voice and writer voice can be distinguished While reporter voice means a factual and objective writing style, the latter is more subjective and thus holds more emotive elements from the author Writer voice is subsequently re- divided into correspondent voice and commentator voice Thompson et al (2008) revealed that reporter voice is employed in ―hard news‖ coverage (i.e reports of accidents, protest crimes, etc.) Practically, writing in reporter voice means

―refraining from all judgements of human behaviour, confining such evaluations to the quoted words of external sources‖. Correspondent voice is used in articles of specialist or round journalists (i.e ―correspondents‖) It is described by Thompson et al (2008) as a ―category which explicitly assesses human behaviour by reference to notions of human capacity, tenacity and normality, but will refrain from explicitly making ethical judgements about right or wrong.‖ Conversely, commentator voice is

―found in the context of the overtly argumentative and subjective types (i.e opinion pieces, commentaries and editorials).‖

CHAPTER SUMMARY

This chapter gives an overview on discourse semantics and Appraisal framework at the discourse semantics level(Martin & White, 2005) The Appraisal framework of English is applied to analyze Appraisal resources in the Vietnamese language In other words, the Vietnamese language shares the Appraisal resources in English as outlined by Martin & White(2005); however, Vietnamese also has distinctive evaluative elements which do not have equivalents in English In the light of the Appraisal framework, previous studies on evaluative language in opinion discourses are reviewed to identify the general trend and orientation for language and styles in such kinds of discourses as well as the research gap that the thesis will bridge.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

RESEARCH DESIGN

As an integral part in facilitating the implementation of this dissertation, the research design would establish a framework for data collecting and analysis, as well as assists in the selection of appropriate research methodologies to deal with seeking the qualitative and quantitative information to the three research questions Guided by the three research questions,namely (1) What are semantic features and lexicogrammatical realizations of Attitude and Graduation in English economic opinion articles? (2) What are semantic features and lexicogrammatical realizations of Attitude and Graduation in Vietnamese economic opinion articles? and (3) What are similarities and differences in terms of semantic features and lexicogrammatical realizations of Attitude and Graduation between EEOAs and VEOAs? the thesis was designed as a descriptive comparative study combining qualitative and quantitative approaches This descriptive and comparative research was therefore intended to provide contrastive information about the issues in the research questions in English and Vietnamese by methodically describing facts about these expressions involving areas of semantic and lexicogrammatical realizations.

The thesis aims to examine semantic features and lexicogrammatical realizations of Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese economic opinion articles in the lens of Appraisal and Systemic functional Grammar framework. This viewpoint foregrounds the functional nature of language as a foundation for analyzing the ways in which assessment is employed in discourse to fulfill particular communicative objectives Appraisal framework plays a prominent role in social interaction by serving as a reflection of writers‘ attitudes, beliefs, and values, and SFL can shed light on the manner in which Appraisal is employed in discourse to create social identities To be more precise, SFL offers a variety of analytical instruments for examining the realization of Attitude and Graduation, which provide a methodical approach to examining how authors assess, discuss, and clarify their positions in the discourse of economic opinion.

So as to meet the demand of objectives and research questions, the descriptive and contrastive research sought quantitative and qualitative information for the semantic values and lexicogrammatical realizations of Attitude and Graduation used in economic opinion articles in English and Vietnamese using Appraisal theory To achieve this, a descriptive qualitative method was applied in order to comprehend the semantic concepts and properties that form the evaluative values in theAppraisal subsystems, as expressed through the utilization of resources found in English and Vietnamese economic opinion articles In addition, comparative research was deployed to clarify similarities and differences in terms of semantic features and lexicogrammatical realizations of Attitude and Graduation between EEOAs and VEOAs In terms of quantitative information collection, the study employed Microsoft Excel software to quantify the tokens of subtypes of Attitude andGraduation, and then examine the similarities and differences in the proportions of these categories in English and Vietnamese economic opinion articles as the quantitative information analysis.

Figure 3.1 shows the research plan of the research design The primary goal of the descriptive and comparative research was to provide a thorough, precise, and systematic description of the functions and characteristics of the Graduation and Attitude resources It is thought that the benefits of applying discourse analysis will help achieve this First, the thesis analyzed and described semantic features through distribution using two Attitudinal sub-systems, namely Attitudes, and Graduation in English and Vietnamese discourses Next, based on the context, the pragmatic features manifest themselves through the use of an evaluative language source by means of explicit or implicit evaluation; and positive or negative Finally, Attitude andGraduation realizations are analyzed by means such as types of sentences, phrases, and words in EEOAs and VEOAs.

RESEARCH METHODS

Based on the three research questions, the dissertation made use of descriptive qualitative method and comparative method for seeking qualitative and quantitative data, so as to address three issues in the research questions: (i) identifying what semantic features and lexicogrammatical realizations of Attitude and Graduation in English economic opinion articles are; (ii) identifying what semantic features and lexicogrammatical realizations of Attitude and Graduation in Vietnamese economic opinion articles are; and (iii) exploring what similarities and differences in terms of semantic features and lexicogrammatical realizations of Attitude and Graduation between EEOAs and VEOAs are.

The dissertation used a descriptive qualitative method to describe the semantic features and realizations of Attitude andGraduation in EEOAs and VEOAs The approach helps to establish certain theoretical points that might be deduced from the findings Specifically, the method was utilized to examine and synthesize the collected materials in order to provide a theoretical and analytical framework, as well as criteria for recognizing semantic elements of Attitude and

Graduation in EEOAs and VEOAs It also allows the researcher to look at the Attitude and Graduation realizations in EEOAs and VEOAs as shown by the data samples Simultaneously, this makes it easier to see the similarities and differences between Attitude and Graduation in EEOAs and ones in VEOAs This approach can be used to identify realizations and meanings in the language used in economic opinion discourse.

Discourse analysis was used in the study to analyze both qualitative and quantitative data Discourse analysis was carried out so as to examine how language functions in the social media contexts of economic opinion and its realizations. Discourse analysis was also deployed to highlight the contextual meaning of language and to focus on the social aspects of communication and the ways in which writers employ language to achieve particular effects - that is, to use linguistic resources of appraisal to foster attraction, to elicit strong feelings in the reader, or to persuade them.

Although descriptive qualitative research is not based on statistics, and typically favors more qualitative methods, it can incorporate quantifiable data as well Quantitative information was applied in this thesis, and it referred to the frequency of occurrence of Attitude and Graduation values in the discourses The approach allows the researcher to compare a huge number of items with a relatively simple index Furthermore, thanks to the use of statistical methods, quantitative information helps to investigate the properties of the collected data The researcher also employed quantitative analysis to provide a count for specific figures that would provide clear and valid proofs leading to findings or comments, as well as indicating their qualities from numerical and quantitative values, and draws conclusions about Attitude and Graduation frequencies and distributions inEEOAs and VEOAs This entails identifying groupings or subgroups of Attitude and Graduation that are more appropriate for use in economic opinion articles.

The purpose of the comparative analysis is to find the similarities and differences between Attitude and Graduation in EEOAs and ones in VEOAs in terms of semantic features and lexicogrammatical realizations The scope of comparison is bilingual, parallel, and two-way comparison in which both languages, English and Vietnamese are both the target languages so as to help understand the specifics of both languages instead of a one-way approach where only one is the target language and the other is the source language (Le Quang Thiem, 2008, p 333-334).

The contrastive analysis only focuses on comparing the semantic features of Attitude and Graduation values; the pragmatic features of the use of explicit and implicit, negative and positive Attitude and Graduation values; and Attitude andGraduation realizations via lexicogrammatical sources Thus, the comparison only focuses on functional comparison (LeQuang Thiem, 2008, p 340) In addition to comparing five subtypes of economic opinion discourses in English andVietnamese with the aid of using quantitative information, the thesis also made detailed comments on the similarities and differences in the use and distribution of Attitude and Graduation in EEOAs and ones in VEOAs; then appropriate recommendations would be made for learners of writing with assessment elements in each language.

SAMPLING

The sample selection process was conducted based on parameters to identify Attitude and Graduation so that the sample selection would be consistent with the Appraisal framework by Martin and White (2005) In addition to the realization criteria and the initial list of lexical units by Martin and White (2005), several more additional criteria were added by the researcher to establish a framework to identify and select examples of linguistic expressions that convey appraisal meanings in the subsystems of Attitude and Graduation Especially, the purposive sampling from the representative samples of clauses comprising Attitude and Graduation resources was employed to achieve the reliability The use of purposeful sampling served to guarantee that the participants‘ and economists‘ opinions were chosen in accordance with the objectives of the research and to enable a thorough examination of the evaluation language in terms of graduation and attitude This made it possible for the researchers to focus on particular data points that were the most significant for providing insightful answers to the research questions.

The examples selected for the current investigation need to be realized and recognized via the Attitude and Graduation criteria presented in Chapter 2 The obtained samples must demonstrate how Attitude and Graduation were represented semantically in lexical units, grammatical functions, and grammatical forms including words, groups, or clauses in EEOAs and VEOAs.

Attitude instances in economic opinion articles revealed the emotion, judgement and valuation of the writers in semantic categories of Affect, Judgement and Appreciation Attitude samples can be chosen as words, groups, or clauses in media texts of economic opinion.

Force instances as subtype of Graduation can be represented as one of these following levels of intensity as semantic function: isolated lexeme, or semantic infusion, figurative or non-figurative features Force can also be examined in combination with or infused into Attitude instances as lexical devices to deepen the meanings of Attitude.

Some instance examples are displayed as follow:

(3.1) Chúng ta đã tự hào [Affect] về tốc độ tăng trưởng xuất nhập khẩu ngày càng cao [Appreciation/ Graduation], về kết quả xuất siêu ngày càng lớn [Appreciation/ Graduation]… (E27)

(3.2) Diễn biến trên thị trường tài chính từ đầu năm đến nay cho thấy không còn kênh đầu tư nào hấp dẫn hơn chứng khoán (E13)

(3.3) If anything, myriad [Graduation: Quantification] examples of calls gone wrong [Appreciation] show there is plenty of [Graduation: Quantification] humility to be learned from markets, which regularly prove the smartest investors and strategists wrong [Appreciation] (E17)

The classified level of the Appraisal system based on the Appraisal theory by Martin and White (2005) was employed to choose linguistic expressions of Attitude and Graduation annotations as attitudinal annotating components (contain a positive or negative quality) and Force of Graduation annotation elements (contain a qualifier or quantifier) Read and Carrol (2012) assess a number of possible methods for annotating the appraisal values, including (i) one word per annotation, (ii) multi-word expressions per annotation, and (iii) a complete sentence per annotation In this thesis, a systematic linguistic analysis of texts required a detailed analysis at the level of the lexico-grammar Making the choice for the annotating unit was the most challenging assignment when it came to annotating the texts utilizing appraisal categories Initially, I was drawn to clause- oriented annotation due to my familiarity with traditional grammar However, it was later shown that this method of annotation was ineffective for aiding in content analysis, particularly in case of implicit evaluation since this process would cause the discourse to become inconsistently unconnected in its semantic unification It was suggested that I take into account Cloran‘s notion of message units, which prioritizes semantic unity over formal realization (Cloran, 1994).

There are several advantages of annotating a message unit as mentioned by Cloran (1994), Halliday (1974), Halliday and Hasan (1989) According to them, there is no direct correlation between semantics and grammar; therefore, connecting a lexico-grammatical realization to a semantic one is not always feasible Halliday (1974) also acknowledged that in many cases, ―one element in the semantic system is realized by more than one in the lexico-grammatical system.‖ According to Hasan‘s definition of meaning, the message is the lowest semantic unit.

In the end, I employed a unit of analysis, which is defined as a clause conveying a complete message or a cluster of clauses indicating a message The cluster of clauses consists of those that convey the ―main‖ message and those that serve solely as co-text to aid in understanding it For instance, the following quote has five clusters of clauses confined by the brackets; each has one major message unit that is underlined The remaining cluster serves as co-text, facilitating comprehension of the primary message units.

(3.4) [Despite the familiar promises, Amazon is not a good partner ] [Not for the cities it occupies, not for the merchants who depend on it, not for the workers it employs.] [The company does not seek partnership; it seeks control.] [Seattle‘s experience shows that becoming dependent on Amazon did not lead to broader wealth; it has pushed up home prices and led to increased homelessness.] [Amazon also threw its political weight around in the city, spending millions in a brutal campaign to resist corporate taxes in Seattle.]… (E39)

Using appraisal analysis, the text that contains the primary message - the one that is underlined - was examined This entails determining specifics regarding the object of appraisal, the appraiser, the attitude coded (judgment, affect, or appreciation), the polarity it represented (positive or negative), the degree of evaluation (intensification, quantification, sharpening or softening), and the degree of explicitness or implicitness.

In terms of explicit expressions, only a clause can also convey a message.

(3.5) The Biden plan also includes smart [Appreciation] provisions that would improve the tax code and economic growth (E8)

In this example, the message can be fully understood in a clause Adjective

―smart‖ is employed to denote positive Appreciation toward thing ―provisions‖.

Annotating expressions of Attitude and Graduation in EEOAs and VEOAs offered some complications since the subtypes of Attitude and Graduation values could overlap In terms of Appraisal terms, it was found that the analysis of overlapping annotations satisfies the extra criteria Therefore, the agreement measure between two annotators‘ (a and b) sets of linguistic phrases (A and B) was used for the Attitude and Graduation annotations as arg This is a sensitive annotation measure of the proportion to annotate the data, adapted from Wiebe et al (2005).

Annotator (a) represents the researcher, and Annotator (b) reflects the colleagues in this agreement measure Initially, the researcher annotated Attitude and Graduation variables from the data The colleagues then annotate these items once again to confirm that the appraisal values meet the criteria for Appraisal realizations in the theory by Martin and White (2005) The process of cross- annotated by colleagues and the researcher can ensure the reliability of the thesis.

DATA COLLECTION

Walliman (2011) pointed out that the research questions are the key factors in guiding the data collection methods and data analysis Therefore, the first task is to determine the data source based on the stated research questions for the following issues under investigation: i semantic features and lexicogrammatical realizations of

Graduation in English economic opinion articles;

Attitude and ii semantic features and lexicogrammatical realizations of Graduation in Vietnamese economic opinion articles;

Attitude and iii similarities and differences in terms of semantic features and lexicogrammatical realizations of Attitude and Graduation between EEOAs and VEOAs.

The data needed for this piece of research thus have been identified as realizations of Attitude and Graduation under the theoretical framework of Appraisal by Martin and White (2005) For such data to be collected, it is important that the description of data source, sampling as well as criteria for identifying intensification need to be clarified.

The data were taken from 50 EEOAs and 50 VEOAs gathered from different quality and popular newspapers, namely The New York Times and The Wall Street journal (English texts); The Thoi bao Kinh te Sai gon and Cafef (Vietnamese texts) The subjective nature of these articles allows for a clear analysis of evaluative language Such kinds of newspapers are chosen due to the following reasons.

First, White (1998) stated that ―broadsheet‖ is typically used to reference those publications which characterize themselves as ―up-market‖, as ―the quality press‖ or as ―journals of record‖ Broadsheet newspapers reference those publications which apply the conventions with respect to journalistic voice and interpersonal style They aspire to be ‗journals of record‘ for the community in general, to reach as broad a market as possible Therefore, I personally prefer such kinds which operate in newspapers including The New York Times and The Wall street journal (English texts); The Thoi bao Kinh te Sai gon and The Cafef (Vietnamese texts).

Second, The New York Times, The Wall Street journal, The Thoi bao Kinh te Sai gon and The Cafef are popular national newspapers in America and Vietnam respectively The New York Times is a morning daily broadsheet newspaper published in New York City, the United States and one of the world‘s great newspapers Its weekday circulation is 443,000 copies The Thoi bao Kinh te Sai gon is a weekly reliable newspaper of business people, which is published every Thursday,with a weekly circulation of 70,000 copies Although there is a significant difference among the newspapers in terms of the circulation, they were chosen for the comparative and contrastive study because they are the big national newspaper serving a relatively diverse audience, and they have a high proportion of economic opinion pieces.

Moreover, White (1998) stated that ―broadsheet publications are more readily available on the web, so data collection is made easier‖ Thus, the data for my current thesis were taken electronically from websites of four newspapers, including thesaigontimes.vn, cafef.vn, wsj.com, and nytimes.com.

Source of data collection consists of articles dating from April 2018 to June 2021 This time frame is chosen because of its significant features According to the International Monetary Fund Blog (2019), global growth in 2019 recorded its weakest pace since the global financial crisis a decade ago, reflecting common influences across countries and country-specific factors The year 2019 also saw a number of economy-related issues such as worsening macroeconomic stress related to tighter financial conditions, geopolitical tensions, and social unrest rounded out the difficult picture When it comes to the year

2020, Covid-19 has scarred the global economy, so a variety of issues still have been discussed This should provide us with articles reflecting a range of responses.

DATA ANALYSIS

A detailed analysis of the acquired data was conducted to achieve the following study objectives: (i) examine semantic features and lexicogrammatical realizations of Attitude and Graduation in EEOAs; (ii) examine semantic features and lexicogrammatical realizations of Attitude and Graduation in VEOAs; (iii) discover similarities and differences in terms of semantic features and lexicogrammatical realizations of Attitude and Graduation between EEOAs and VEOAs In order to investigate the semantic characteristics and lexicogrammatical realizations of Attitude and Graduation in EEOAs and VEOAs, a descriptive qualitative method with qualitative information was utilized Furthermore, the distribution of the variables and empirical data were described by analyzing the quantitative data A summary of the dataset was produced by calculating metrics like frequencies and occurrences Subsequently, these statistical data were compared in order to identify any commonalities or discrepancies between the variables in Vietnamese and English Microsoft Excel was used for all analyses so as to guarantee the accuracy and reliability of the findings The data analysis results served as the foundation for the thesis‘s subsequent interpretation, debate, and conclusions The steps for data analysis included:

- read each piece of EEOAs and VEOAs carefully and pick up all samples of Attitude and Graduation based on their identification criteria;

- code the data by capturing the key concepts, expressions, or ideas related to Attitude and Graduation, including specific terms, phrases that were indicative of Attitude and Graduation for systematically marking instances of these categories throughout the dataset;

- examine and classify the samples into four lists of data, namely (i) Affect,

(ii) Judgement, (iii) Appreciation, (iv) Force;

- sub-divide the given data in these four categories into smaller groups of each domain based on different subtypes of Affect, Judgement, Appreciation, and Force in the Appraisal Framework;

- analyze the contrastive features of Attitude and Graduation to discover possible similarities and differences of Attitude and Graduation between EEOAs and VEOAs.

The thesis is based mostly on Appraisal framework by Martin and White (2005), with the objective of analyzing the semantic features and lexicogrammatical realizations of Attitude and Graduation in EEOAs and VEOAs In detail, the study attempts to examine how Attitude and Graduation are realized, established, sourced, and targeted; therefore, discourse semantics is considered since the realizations of an attitude tends to spread over a phase of conversation, regardless of grammatical limits, and via a range of grammatical categories or grammatical metaphor, a certain attitude can be realized Two main systems of Appraisal framework were used to analyze the data collected for this study, as shown in Figure 3.3.

Figure 3.2 Analytical Framework for the study

Coding normally plays a prominent role in organizing and categorizing the data collected in the data analysis process, and facilitates subsequent analysis and interpretation There are several ways to code the raw data Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan and Nguyen Thi Lan Huong (2020), Tran Van Phuoc (2020) used color coding to show which attitude belongs to Affect, Judgement or Appreciation Martin and White (2005, p.71) acknowledged that color coding is a useful technique involving just a few fairly general categories; however, they pointed out that this is too expensive for publication Similarly, color coding seems inappropriate for this current study due to a huge amount of data Therefore, I began with inscriptions, and use a table to display results The abbreviations were employed as follows:

+ve ‗positive attitude‘ prop ‗judgement: propriety‘

-ve ‗negative attitude‘ reac ‗appreciation: reaction‘ inc ‗affect: inclination‘ comp ‗appreciation: composition‘ hap ‗affect: un/happiness‘ val ‗appreciation: valuation‘ sec ‗affect: in/security‘ scale ‗intensification: scale‘ sat ‗affect: dis/satisfaction‘ lexi ‗intensification: lexicalization‘ norm ‗judgement: normality‘ inf ‗intensification: infusion‘ cap ‗judgement: capacity‘ num ‗quantification: number‘ ten ‗judgement: tenacity‘ mass ‗quantification: mass‘ ver ‗judgement: veracity‘ extent ‗quantification: extent‘

It is also useful to note the source of the Attitude ―Appraiser‖ refers to who is judging or appreciating;and ―Appraised‖ refers to who is being judged and what is being appreciated.

In terms of qualitative analysis, the research questions and data aided in the submission of a specialized analytical framework in respect to the thesis‘ theoretical underpinnings Data analysis is the process of analyzing collected data in order to answer research questions and come to a conclusion about the study problem Data analysis made use of the qualitative method and contrastive method so as to reflects

(i) what semantic features and lexico-grammatical realizations of Attitude and Graduation are in EEOAs and VEOAs, (ii) what semantic features and lexico- grammatical realizations of Attitude and Graduation are in VEOAs, as well as (iii) what similarities and differences exist between Attitude and Graduation in EEOAs and ones in VEOAs As for identifying semantic features and lexicogrammatical realizations of Attitude and Graduation in EEOAs and VEOAs, the thesis bases on the Attitude and Graduation framework of Appraisal by Martin and White (2005) The data collected consists of instances which were used for the analysis of evaluation language in the media discourse In terms of semantic features of Attitude, it will be reported in three aspects as indicated in the coding scheme: (1) Attitude types, (2) Explicitness, and (3) Polarity Meanwhile, semantic features of Graduation will be reported via Force as Graduation, with Force types and Scale The samples in these categories were sorted and divided into subcategories: (i) Un/Happiness, (ii) Dis/Satisfaction, (iii) In/Security, and (iv) Dis/Inclination of Affect; (v) Normality, (vi) Capacity, (vii) Tenacity, (viii) Veracity, and (ix) Propriety of Judgement; (x) Impact- Reaction, (xi) Quality-Reaction, (xii) Balance- Composition, (xiii) Complexity-Composition, and (xiv) Valuation of Appreciation;

Realizations of Attitude were examined regarding Explicitness (whether the realizations were explicit or implicit) andPolarity (whether the realizations were positive or negative) The following dimensions were further investigated in case the realizations were explicit: (1) lexical instantiations, (2) the core/non-coreness and high/low frequency of the lexical instantiations,and (3) grammatical realizations (regarding function and form) Explicit Attitude‘s linguistic manifestations are typically found at the word or phrase level They will be depicted in relation to how frequently they appear throughout the entire data collection The fundamental transitivity system at the lexico-grammar level described by Halliday & Matthiessen (2004) was used to analyze the grammatical realizations of the Attitude instances The functional labels and the form labels are two conventions that will be utilized to describe the grammatical realizations of the instances There will be two layers to the descriptions of the instances' functions If Attitude resources were implicit, more research into the invocation tactics, namely Provoke, Flag, and Afford was put into practice The entire text-discourse must be read carefully to establish a general understanding of the meaning; then determine the lexical units in the text-discourse and establish the meaning of each lexical unit in context, that is, how it applies to an entity, relation, or attribute in the situation evoked by the text (contextual meaning) In addition, the selection of ideational meanings is enough to invoke evaluation, even in the absence of attitudinal lexis that tells us directly how to feel, as a function of lexical metaphor.

The analysis was carried out cautiously after the data had been sorted and categorized together The thesis applied Martin and White's (2005) theoretical framework of appraisal to conduct an observation, examination, and description of Attitude and Graduation samples in the established lists in order to examine their semantic aspects and realizations in EEOAs and VEOAs The context of the discourses is also carefully considered in order to identify explicit and implicit evaluation, positive or negative meanings, and cases of semantic domain transfer.

As regards quantitative analysis, the data analysis was conducted with the use of tools, mostly Microsoft Excel as a computer application, in which rows and columns on a spreadsheet are used to display the data, and pivottable and pivotchart are used to count the number of distributions represented by column, pie, and bar charts The analysis entailed using an analytical framework and providing data analysis procedures Statistical analysis has played an important stage to describe the data in numeric findings and perform distribution values so that we can understand how subdomains of Attitude and Graduation are realized in EEOAs and VEOAs Furthermore, these were used to define which Attitude and Graduation groups or subgroups are preferred in EEOAs and VEOAs To make it easier for statistics, we count sentences, phrases and words that repeat many times in the discourse as discrete occurrences, and when sorting into the appendices, we count the number of times.

The similarities and differences between Attitude and Graduation in EEOAs and those in VEOAs were compared.

A comparison was made to explore the similarities and differences between Attitude and Graduation in EEOAs and ones inVEOAs The comparison of semantic features of Attitude in EEOAs and VEOAs was conducted with the aids of quantitative information on the distribution of Attitude subtypes and Graduation; in other words, the proportion of Attitude andGraduation instances in the two corpora, then some conclusions are drawn about using attitude to persuade readers in each language The comparison between the proportions of Attitude instances in 50 EEOAs and 50 VEOAs is investigated in three respects: (1) the proportions of Attitude types, (2) the proportions of explicit and implicit Attitude, and (3) the proportions of negative and positive Attitude instances Like Attitude, the differences in the deployment of Graduation in EEOAs andVEOAs were examined from two perspectives: (1) semantic features of Force with proportions of Force subtypes and (2) the realizations of Force.

RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY

Reliability and validity are two crucial components for data collection Although the task was primarily done by hand, it is clear that the data collection and data analysis were done correctly This is due to the fact that the data was chosen using proper criteria, resulting in increased reliability When the thesis achieves reliability and validity, the findings have genuine value and significance.

Reliability addresses the stability and consistency of the data collecting methods used; it guarantees the consistency and dependability of the findings, too A number of measures were done to improve the data‘s reliability during the research process The thesis follows a systematic and methodical design The data collection and data analysis were done in accordance with the research design and the steps to follow in the procedures of data collection and data analysis in order to ensure the reliability of the method and methodology utilized in the thesis The identification of subsystems of Attitude and Graduation in the data collection was conducted based on the criteria set up from the theoretical framework The analysis of Attitude and Graduation was also conducted based on the particular context of each discourses In addition, the annotation agreement measure between the colleagues and the researcher – discussed in section 3.3.4 of this chapter – validates the identification of Attitudea and Graduation.

The study employed concepts and indicators that were taken from the theoretical framework of Appraisal by Martin and White (2005) to achieve construct validity Only relevant questions that depict known markers of semantic features within the purview of lexicogrammar were investigated As a result, the inquiry was expected to define the functional characteristics of the Appraisal framework that were supposed to be investigated, namely descriptive information about (i) semantic features and lexicogrammatical realizations of Attitude and Graduation in EEOAs (ii) semantic features and lexicogrammatical realizations of Attitude and Graduation in EEOAs, (iii) similarities and differences between Attitude and Graduation in EEOAs and ones in VEOAs The content of the description technique was intended to encompass all important portions of the subject it aimed to describe in order to deliver valid results The description was expected to have face validity since the content fit the study's goals of investigating semantic features and lexico-grammatical realizations of Attitude and Graduation in EEOAs and VEOAs.

The thesis drew on the Appraisal framework by Martin and White (2005) to accurately analyze the data Moreover,the researcher and colleagues cross-checked the identification and analysis of Attitude and Graduation in EEOAs andVEOAs, like the step has been done to address reliability, to verify the same interpretation that fulfilled the construct validity for the descriptive analysis All these procedures were predicted to attain external validity.

CHAPTER SUMMARY

Chapter 3 has described research design and research methodology of the dissertation and the steps in which the samples were collected The thesis has applied descriptive design and comparative design with the aim of seeking qualitative and quantitative information so as to answer three research questions In addition, the procedures for data analysis, reliability and validity of the thesis have also been presented in this chapter in order to lay the foundation for detailed findings and discussion in the following chapters In applying the Appraisal approach to examine the deployment of Attitude and Graduation in economic opinion articles on economic issues, the Appraisal framework will be employed as a coding scheme The deployment of Attitude and Graduation in English and Vietnamese will be analyzed and compared in two dimensions: (1) semantic features of Attitude and Graduation instances deployed in the two data collections and (2) the realizations of Attitude and Graduation through lexicogrammatical resources The analysis of these dimensions of the English language data and theVietnamese data will be reported respectively in the following chapters.

ATTITUDE AND GRADUATION IN ENGLISH

THE DEPLOYMENT OF ATTITUDE RESOURCES IN ENGLISH

The deployment of Attitude resources in EEOAs was examined from two perspectives, including (i) semantic features and (ii) lexicogrammatical realizations, with the aid of quantitative information on the distribution of Attitude‘s sub- categories.

4.1.1 The proportions of Attitude resources in EEOAs

After the data were analyzed based on the indicators set up in chapter 3, the key findings showed that all three subtypes of Attitude were recognized in 50 selected EEOAs with appropriate proportions reflecting the nature of opinion articles Let‘s begin with the table and the chart of distribution of Attitude realized in 50 collected EEOAs as follows:

Table 4.1 Distribution of Attitude in EEOAs

TOTAL EXPLICIT IMPLICIT POSITIVE NEGATIVE

No % No % No % No % No %

As can be seen from Table 4.1, a total of 2,517 instances of Attitude were realized, and these were classified in three groups, namely Affect, Judgement, and Appreciation In detail, Judgement was the most prevalent of the three primary forms of Attitude (Affect, Judgement, and Appreciation), making up 43.4% of all realized occurrences in 50 EEOAs, as shown in Figure 4.1 Appreciation came in second at 42.7% while Affect accounted for the smallest percentage, at 13.8%.

Figure 4.1 Distribution of Attitude subtypes in EEOAs

In terms of Attitude mode, Attitude instances were both explicit and implicit The percentage of implicit instances was higher than that of explicit ones, 52.8% and 47.2% respectively, due to the remarkable proportion of implicit Judgement. Meanwhile, the figures for explicit Affect and Appreciation were higher than that of implicit ones Figure

4.2 illustrates the proportions of the explicitness of Attitude subtypes.

Figure 4.2 Distribution of Explicitness of Attitude in EEOAs

As can be seen from Figure 4.2, there were opposite patterns between explicit and implicit groups In detail, in the explicit group, Appreciation instances constituted the highest proportion at 28.4% (doubled the figure of implicit one), and this figure was more than twice that of Judgement (11.4%), while the proportion of explicit Affect instances was lowest (7.5%). Conversely, in the implicit group, implicit Judgement instances ranked first, at 32%, followed by implicit Appreciation and Affect 14.4% and 6.4% in turn.

Figure 4.3 Distribution of Attitude Polarity in EEOAs

Polarity of Attitude, which refers to positive or negative displays of Attitude, was the final variable that Attitude examples were analyzed against As seen in Figure 4.3, it was discovered that positive cases took up a slightly bigger percentage of Attitude instances, at 52.7%, compared with 47.3% of negative instances Furthermore, similar patterns were found in the percentage of Attitude subtypes between positive and negative groups In detail, the proportions of positive and negative Judgement items were highest at 23% and 20.5% in that order, followed by Appreciation (22.5% and 20.3%) and Affect ranked last (7.3% of positive values and 6.6% of negative values).

A discussion on the use and distribution of Attitude subtypes in the opinion discourse based on the above quantitative information and relevant research will be presented in the next section after investigating the semantic features and lexicogrammatical realizations of Attitude in EEOAs.

4.1.2 Semantic features of Attitude in EEOAs

Martin (1992, 2002) indicated that the level of text analysis consisted of the social context categorized as register and genre, so which Attitude subtypes, Attitude mode and polarity were deployed in 50 collected English economic opinion articles associated with American culture and current finance market Therefore, it is important to illustrate the business culture ofAmerica first to get the target evaluation In American culture, when it comes to supervision in the field of social and economic life, at all government levels, the president cannot determine fiscal policy on his own since that requires the cooperation ofCongress (Thoma, 2016); however, presidents matter for the economy in some circumstances The president chooses the chair of the Fed, who has a significant impact on how monetary policy is conducted as the responsibility of keeping things on a stable economic path The activities of American businesses, the banking system and the stock market are largely dependent on the actions of the Fed During a severe crisis, the president also significantly affects fiscal policy, which is an important part of the response to catastrophic recessions Accordingly, the English economic opinion articles are normally involved in state administration of the stock market, the U.S enterprises and banking practices.

Regarding the communicative purposes, 50 analyzed English economic opinions over the period between 2018 and 2021 mainly presented the assessment and attitude of the appraisers on: the actions in the process of administration by president Trump and Biden in economic crisis and economic recovery; the stock market with the stock buybacks, the index fund, the stock investments under the influences of the Fed and the pandemic; the fiscal management tools and policies of the Fed towards American enterprises as well as American banking system These topics were discussed in combination throughout 50 opinion articles, numbered from E1 to E50 There were 2,517 instances of Attitude figured out in 50 EEOAs with the total numbers of words of 43,381 Attitudinal meanings were realized in all sub-areas, in which Appreciation included Impact-Reaction, Quality-Reaction, Balance-Composition, Complexity-Composition, and Valuation; Judgment consisted of Normality, Capacity, Tenacity, Veracity, and Propriety; Affect involved in Un/Happiness, In/Security, Dis/Satisfaction, and Dis/Inclination Table

4.2 demonstrates the distribution of Attitude subtypes in detail In addition, the analysis of each Attitude category – Affect, Appreciation and Judgment – is presented in turn in the following subsections.

Table 4.2 Distribution of Attitude subtypes in EEOAs

A TT IT U D E Subtypes TOTAL EXPLICIT ITEMS IMPLICIT ITEMS

No % No % No % No % No %

4.1.2.1 Semantic features of Affect in EEOAs

As dealing with resources for construing emotional reactions, Affect realized in 50 EEOAs encompassed four types: (1) Un/Happiness, (2) In/Security, (3) Dis/Satisfaction, and (4) Dis/Inclination The emotions are typically interpreted by the culture as positive or negative ones Accordingly, Un/happiness dealt with the feelings of misery/antipathy or cheer/affection; In/security involved feelings of disquiet or trust; Dis/satisfaction covered feelings of ennui/displeasure or interest/pleasure; Dis/inclination addressed the feelings of Non-desire/desire Their distribution was illustrated in Figure 4.4 and Figure 4.5.

Figure 4.4 Distribution of positive and negative Affect subtypes

Figure 4.5 Distribution of explicit and implicit Affect subtypes

As can be seen from Figure 4.4, Dis/Inclination and In/Security were most frequently deployed, at 4.9% and 4.8% respectively, followed by Dis/Satisfaction (2.5%) whereas Un/Happiness was least frequently used, at only 1.5% in 50 EEOAs Moreover, there were more positive Affect instances than negative ones (7.3% of positive values compared to 6.6% of negative values), especially the feelings of Desire which accounted for a significant proportion at 3.8% The participants most frequently used Desire, a subtype of Dis/Inclination and least frequently deployed Misery/Antipathy.

In 50 EEOAs, some resources of Un/Happiness indicated the positive emotions from participants (include Author and Non-Author) in response to Trigger (the phenomenon responsible for that emotion) like the success of enterprises, the development of economy, or the proper actions of the president in the market, etc or the feelings of Misery/Antipathy when mentioning the suffering of businesses in the pandemic, inappropriate actions of the leaders towards the businesses In/Security resources denoted a greater negative emotion of Disquiet in response to the economic crisis, the outbreak of the disease and its impacts on the economy, the administrative missteps of the government, the stock market volatility, etc Meanwhile, Dis/Inclination resources revealed more positive responses to the phenomenon including the expectation of investment or the transformation of the economy, enterprises‘ desire for autonomy, etc Dis/Satisfaction showed negative attitude toward some of president Trump‘s actions but satisfied with Biden‘s plan in interest rate adjustment, or business tricks The feelings were graded explicitly or implicitly, and as can be seen from Figure 4.5, the percentage of explicit resources was higher than that of implicit ones, 7.5% compared to 6.4% The use of explicit Affect was exemplified by the extract presented below.

(4.1) Most important, we need Congress to require quarterly reporting of these estimates alongside gross domestic product.(E21)

(4.2) It turns out, however, that many businesses want to keep those regulations in place Major oil and gas producers oppose Trump‘s relaxation of rules on emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas (E4)

(4.3) Only 28 percent of major companies even provide quarterly guidance, and those forecasts help set investors‘ expectations and smooth market volatility (E35)

(4.4) The world‘s major central bankers and commentators fetishize interest rates They cheered the Fed‘s move because they believe that changes to interest rates are an indicator of the central bank‘s monetary-policy stance (E44)

(4.5) Senator Bernie Sanders praised Amazon after the $15-an-hour announcement, saying he hoped that other companies would follow its lead (E19)

(4.6) Major oil and gas producers oppose Trump‘s relaxation of rules on emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. (E4)

(4.7) No one should be happy with June‘s 11.1% unemployment rate, but it‘s notably better than April‘s 14.7% (E26)

(4.8) If the virus crested through quickly, and once, a V-shaped recovery was plausible But if the pandemic returned for a second wave, we could easily suffer a double-dip recession That‘s my worry now (E26)

(4.9) That‘s a sign of investors becoming nervous that G.E might default (E34)

(4.10) This should make us very skeptical about any calls for a broad, European- style privacy law that would apply across technologies and platforms (E31)

Table 4.3 Examples of explicit Affect in EEOAs

E.g Affect types Appraising items Appraiser

(4.2) +ve Inc Want Non-author (many businesses)

(4.3) +ve Inc Expectation Non-author (investors)

(4.4) +ve Inc Fetishize, cheered, believe Non-author (central bankers and commentators)

(4.5) +ve Sat Praise Non-author (Senator Bernie

(4.6) -ve Sat Oppose Non-author (Major oil and gas producers)

(4.9) -ve Sec Nervous Non-author (Investors)

CHAPTER SUMMARY

In conclusion, the first research question examining the deployment of Attitude and Graduation resources inEEOAs has been addressed in this chapter It has reported the data analysis from two perspectives (i) semantic features ofAttitude and Graduation and (ii) the range of lexicogrammatical realizations of Attitude and Graduation) with preliminary discussions of the findings It is noticed there were many different ways that Attitude and Graduation resources were realized.The majority of the lexical instantiations for attitude were core and frequently used expressions Although the grammatical realizations were more varied, Participant-Attributes were the most common Graduation of Force was expressed mostly by isolated grammatical items In cases where isolated lexical items or semantic infusion items were deployed, they were rather diverse The results of the data analysis provide evidence for the tendency to use evaluation language in opinion articles The second research question on the deployment of Attitude and Graduation in VEOAs will be addressed in the same way and with a similar rhetorical organization pattern in the following chapter, chapter 5, with Vietnamese language data.

ATTITUDE AND GRADUATION IN VIETNAMESE

THE DEPLOYMENT OF ATTITUDE RESOURCES IN

Using quantitative data on the distribution of Attitude‘s sub-categories, the deployment of Attitude resources in VEOAs was evaluated from two viewpoints, including (i) semantic features and (ii) realizations.

5.1.1 The proportions of Attitude types in VEOAs

The primary findings of the data analysis using the indicators established in chapter 3 revealed that all three subtypes of Attitude were identified in 50 selected VEOAs in proportions that accurately reflected the character of opinion articles.

The distribution of Attitude subtypes as realized in 50 VEOAs was presented in Table 5.1 and Figure 5.1 as follow:

Table 5.1 Distribution of Attitude in VEOAs

TOTAL EXPLICIT IMPLICIT POSITIVE NEGATIVE

No % No % No % No % No %

Table 5.1 shows that there were 1,592 total instances of Attitude, which were divided into three categories: Affect, Judgment, and Appreciation In particular, as shown in Figure 5.1, Judgement was the most common of the three main types of Attitude, accounting for 42.1% of all realized occurrences in 50 VEOAs, closely followed by Appreciation with 41.1%. Meanwhile, Affect took up the least amount, at 16.7% It can be concluded that the distributions of Attitude subtypes in EEOAs and VEOAs shared the same pattern.

Figure 5.1 Distribution of Attitude subtypes in VEOAs

Regarding Attitude mode, like the data in EEOAs, both explicit and implicit Attitude instances were found in 50VEOAs Due to the astounding amount of implicit Judgment, the share of implicit instances was higher than that of explicit cases, at 51% and 49% correspondingly Explicit Affect and Appreciation statistics, however, were significantly greater than implicit ones The proportions of the explicitness of Attitude subtypes was shown in Figure 5.2.

Figure 5.2 Distribution of Explicitness of Attitude in VEOAs

Figure 5.2 illustrates the divergent trends between the explicit and implicit groups In the explicit group, explicit instances of Appreciation made up the highest proportion at 25.4% (almost doubling the figure for implicit Appreciation). Explicit Judgement ranked second at 13.6% while explicit Affect made up the lowest proportion at 10.0% On the other hand, in the implicit group, occurrences of implicit Judgement came in top place, at 28.5%, and were followed by implicit Appreciation and Affect, at 13.6% and 6.7%, respectively.

Figure 5.3 Distribution of Attitude Polarity in VEOAs

The last factor that Attitude sources were compared against was polarity of Attitude, which describes positive or negative manifestations of Attitude Figure 5.3 illustrates the finding that positive cases made up a higher proportion of Attitude occurrences than negative ones, at 58.9% against 41.1% The percentage of Attitude subtypes between the positive and negative groups also showed distinct patterns In the positive group, specifically, the percentage of positive Judgement items was highest at 28.6%, while the figure for negative Appreciation was largest in the negative group, at 20% Being rated second, the percentage of occurrences of negative Judgment was 13.6%, while the figure for positive Appreciation was 21.2% Meanwhile, both positive and negative Affect tied for last place, at 9.1 % and 7.6% respectively.

After examining the semantic attributes as well as lexicogrammatical realizations of Attitude in VEOAs, a discussion on the use and distribution of Attitude subtypes in the opinion discourse based on the aforementioned quantitative data and pertinent research will be offered in the next section.

5.1.2 Semantic features of Attitude in VEOAs

According to Warren (1989), writing about the economy entails employing language to characterize, analyze, and explain the economy; in other words, it entails using ―one artifact to write about another artifact‖ Therefore, understanding the characteristics of the economy, business culture plays an important role in the process of describing and evaluating events, issues and people While the American economy is highly advanced and capitalist-oriented, the economy of Vietnam is a developing mixed socialist-oriented market economy While the economy is increasingly marketized, the State's intervention in the economy is still at a high level Vietnam's economy is an economy operating under the market mechanism The economic system is based on freedom and competition in production, consumption and investment All economic values will be based on the natural rules of supply and demand in the market, which will be appropriately regulated, promoting the driving force of economic development among businesses.

In terms of communication purposes, 50 Vietnamese economic opinions from the years 2018 to 2021 mainly presented the appraisers' opinions and assessments on the competitive market, taxes, the stock market and stock investments,fiscal management tools and policies of the State towards Vietnamese enterprises, and the state of the economy These subjects were covered together in 50 opinion pieces with numbers ranging from V1 to V50 In 50 VEOAs, 1,592 instances of attitude were identified All of the sub-areas revealed the existence of attitude meanings, with Appreciation including Impact-Reaction, Quality-Reaction, Balance-Composition, Complexity- Composition, and Valuation; Judgment consisting of Normality, Capacity, Tenacity, Veracity, and Propriety; and Affect including Un/Happiness, In/Security, Dis/Satisfaction, and Dis/Inclination.

Table 5.2 Distribution of Attitude subtypes in VEOAs

AT TIT U DE Sub-types

TOTAL EXPLICIT ITEMS IMPLICIT ITEMS

No % No % No % No % No %

AP PR EC IA TIO N

5.1.2.1 Semantic features of Affect in VEOAs

Affect largely dealt with the appraiser‘s emotional states and was represented, using verbs of emotion To put it in another way, a writer might express their viewpoint on a phenomenon explaining how a phenomenon made them feel and providing an emotive assessment of it The four Affect types (Un/Happiness, Dis/Satisfaction, In/Security and Dis/Inclination) were spread throughout 50 VEOAs, at 16.7% The distribution of these was shown in Figures 5.4 and 5.5.

Figure 5.4 Distribution of positive and negative Affect subtypes

Figure 5.5 Distribution of explicit and implicit Affect subtypes

As can be seen from Figure 5.4, the number of In/Security instances was the biggest of all four subtypes of Affect in

50 VEOAs with 5.4% Dis/Inclination came in second with the proportion of 4.7%, closely followed by Dis/Satisfaction with 4.3% Un/Happiness accounted for an insignificant amount at about 2.2%.

As regards polarity of Affect, there were more positive Affect instances than negative ones In detail, 9.1% of the instances of affect were positive, compared to 7.6% of the occurrences that were negative, with the sentiments of Desire and

Disquiet accounting for a sizable part at 3.8% and 3.3% respectively To convey the feelings about some specific issues, the participants most commonly used Desire, a kind of Dis/Inclination, and least frequently used Misery/Antipathy This statistical result is consistent, reflecting the fact that economics is a science, so it is objective when expressing emotions.

In 50 VEOAs, some sources of Un/Happiness mentioned the positive feelings experienced by participants (including Author and Non-Author) in response to Triggers, such as the success of businesses, the growth of the economy, or the proper actions of the authorities, leaders in economic practices, etc or the feelings of Misery/Antipathy when mentioning the suffering of businesses in the competitive market, inappropriate actions of the leaders, etc According to In/Security sources, people are more likely to feel uneasy due to factors like the market‘s competition, the cumbersome management apparatus, the disease‘s epidemic and its effects on the economy, the volatility of the stock market, etc Meanwhile, the expectation of investment or the transformation of the economy, businesses' desire for autonomy, etc., are some of the most favorable reactions to the phenomenon that were revealed by Dis/Inclination resources Dis/Satisfaction expressed a negative disposition about some business leaders‘ mistakes and the way that businesses compete with one another, but also expressed satisfaction with plans for interest rate adjustment, tax collection, true value of buying bank bonds, monetary policy, development of bank agent channel, or solutions to handle bad debt It was decided whether to evaluate the emotions directly or implicitly, and Figure 5.5 shows that the proportion of explicit resources was larger than that of implicit ones, at 10% as opposed to 6.7% Before examining the use of implicit Affect, the excerpt shown below served as an example of the usage of explicit Affect.

(5.1) Vì vậy thị trường có thể chấp nhận những tác động từ dịch nCoV trong ngắn hạn và kỳ vọng sẽ nhanh chóng phục hồi sau khi dịch bệnh được kiểm soát (V18)

(5.2) Khi dịch Covid-19 bùng phát, các tổ chức quốc tế, chính phủ và doanh nghiệp đều muốn biết những kịch bản nào có thể xảy ra nhằm tìm giải pháp thích ứng (V29)

(5.3) Dịch vụ môi giới chứng khoán tại địa phương tăng trưởng ấn tượng giúp nhà đầu tư có cảm giác an toàn hơn (V14)

(5.4) ….phải đảm bảo thông tin chính xác thì người dân mới có thể đủ tin tưởng để cho mọi thứ sớm hoạt động lại bình thường, giúp nền kinh tế phục hồi (V28)

SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES OF ATTITUDE AND

CONCLUSIONS