An Appraisal Study Of Female Images In Modern Popular Love Song Lyrics

Many scholars have applied the Appraisal System into practical research of various discourses and make it develop a lot since Martin's setting up it. But after analysis and summarizing of the study results, we can find that there are still some limits in the practical using field of this theory, it needs more researches. On the other hand, song lyrics not only reflects the important changes of social concepts and living styles in the new era deeply, but also records Chinese social development at all stages well. It is one of the main study materials for the research of socio-cultural, economic and political interactions. This thesis chooses the Appraisal System as the theory frame, tries to use Chinese modern popular love song lyrics as its research objects and adopts qualitative and quantitative studies together. It attempts to discover the appraisal features of the love song lyrics through the analysis,find out how the female images in Chinese modern popular love song lyrics were presented by the appraisal vocabulary and discuss the love conceptions of the contemporary women which contained in Chinese modern popular love song lyrics. After that, we can find that, as a variety of language, song lyrics not only can imply many kinds of social feelings but also can reflect all kinds of social and cultural attitudes, it is one of the components of the culture as well as other language forms.The thesis is composed of six chapters. The first chapter is a general introduction to the thesis, encompassing the explanation of the Chinese modern popular love song lyrics, rationale of the thesis, aim and objectives, data and methodology, and the organization of the thesis. Chapter 2 gives a literature review on Chinese modern popular love song lyrics and Appraisal System. Chapter 3 presents the basic assumptions and principles of Appraisal System. Chapter 4 gives out the four typical female images in love song lyrics, and based on these female images Chapter 5 shows the concrete discourse analysis, from which we can reveal the appraisal resources in Chinese modern popular love song lyrics. And through the analysis of the context in Appraisal Systemic model, which will be effectively combined for its sub-systems-Attitude, Engagement, and Graduation systems, we can discuss the different attitudes of all kinds of female to reveal the love conceptions of contemporary woman. Chapter 6 summarizes the thesis, displaying the findings of the present study, and points out the limitations of the thesis and directions for future study together in the end.In a word, the thesis, through an appraisal analysis of song lyrics, is expected to answer Martin's call to make a new add on discourse analysis to prove the feasibility of Appraisal System. Meanwhile, it attempts to show that the female images can be presented through appraisal analysis and it can be a beneficial supplement of the song lyrics study. The significance of the thesis lies in the love conceptions embedded in song lyrics, which can give some useful suggestions to people in contemporary society when they face love.