Attitudinal Resources In Dialogues Between Hero And Heroine In Pride And Prejudice

Professor Martin puts forward Appraisal theory in the 1990 s, which is a new theory based on a major branch of Systemic-Functional Linguistics: interpersonal meaning. The interpersonal meaning indicates that language can be adopted to convey speakers’ status, dignity, intention and attitude beyond the literal meaning. Speakers aim to express their attitudes and try to influence others’ attitudes and behavior, by making themselves involved in a special context. The thesis aims to analyze the distributions of the attitudinal resources in the discourse of Pride and Prejudice within the framework of Appraisal theory; and it is presented to study how Elizabeth and Darcy express their attitudes through their dialogues, thus realizing the interpersonal meaning. By digging into the attitudinal resources of the discourse, we can get a better understanding of the development of the hero and heroine’s relationships and their personalities.Pride and Prejudice, which is warmly welcomed since its publication, mainly describes four different marriages, especially the heroine Elizabeth’s emotional changes towards the hero Darcy and their love story. Many scholars have studied the novel from the perspective of the historical background, cultural features, feminism and marriage concept, which involves the discourse analysis and the interpersonal meaning, but mostly limited to the viewpoint of mood, morality and stylistics. The Appraisal theory is used to analyze the “semantic evaluation”, which contributes a lot to the research of literary works.The Appraisal theory consists of three subsystems: affect system, judgment system and appreciation system. The dialogues in Pride and Prejudice will be divided into three parts, in which we will use the quantitative and qualitative method. This paper aims to analyze the development of relationship between Elizabeth and Darcy by studying the distributions of attitudinal resources in the three stages. In stage one, the negative affect and judgment resources are mostly employed, which reveals the unpleasant relationship between Elizabeth and Darcy. In stage two, the negative affect resources largely outcome the positive ones, which reflects Elizabeth’s self-blame and self-satisfaction, during which time Elizabeth begins to realize Darcy’s good personality such as kindness and generosity. In stage three, by employing more affect and judgment resources than those used in the previous two stages, Jane Austen vividly presents their romantic love story and happy marriage. The thesis finds out that the judgment resources are mostly used, followed by the affect and appreciation resources, which reveals that Jane Austen mainly depicts the relationship and personalities of the hero and heroine by careful observation and judgment of their words and behavior.In chapter five, by selecting the dialogues concerning the hero and heroine from the novel and analyzing the affect, judgment and appreciation resources in them, we can better understand the development of relationship between Elizabeth and Darcy and their personalities, thus realizing the interpersonal meaning of the conversations. This paper helps to know further about the characters and theme of the novel as well as provide a new perspective to appreciate the literary works within the framework of Appraisal theory under the Systemic-Functional Linguistics.