Packing Nouns As Attitudinal Resources In Discourse

The present study sets out to systematically investigate the attitudinal functions of a special group of abstract nouns,the typical examples of which are thing,fact,idea,problem, result and way,etc.Based on the analysis of the cognitive,semantic and informational characteristics of abstract nouns typified by thing,fact,idea,problem,result and way,etc, the term "packing noun" is proposed in this dissertation.It is hoped that with the analysis of the cognitive,semantic and informational characteristics of packing nouns,the scope of the resources for attitude realization in discourse can be theoretically broadened and that with the corpus linguistic methods introduced into the existent approach to evaluation function of language,the Interpersonal study of language can be methodologically innovated.The underlying hypothesis of the present study is that packing nouns play an important role in realizing attitude in discourse.It is argued that due to the cognitive,semantic and informational characteristics,packing nouns can be used not only to explicitly express speakers' attitude(i.e.attitude inscription) in discourse,but also to implicitly invoke attitude in discourse(i.e.attitude invocation).The hypotheses of the attitudinal functions of packing nouns are checked in authentic corpus-derived data in terms of the attitudinal behaviors of packing nouns per se and the discourse elements co-occurring with them.Packing nouns are highly frequent in actual use and thus very popular in the linguistic realm as research objects.Corpus investigation shows that singular forms of packing nouns (The plural forms of packing nouns such as things,facts,problems,results,etc.are not studied in the present study.) are significantly higher in frequency than ordinary nouns.The high frequency values of packing nouns in actual use have attracted considerable linguistic attention.In traditional-grammatical studies,packing nouns are abstract nouns the referents of which are unobservable and unmeasurable.The intensional semantic features and the unique syntactic roles of packing nouns have received most of the comments from traditional grammarians.In the philosophical realm,there exists a long-standing controversy over the existence of abstract entities in the world and hence the necessity of abstract nouns in language.However,quite a number of philosophical studies have taken packing nouns as their study objects,with the "container" logic being the prevalent underlying rationale. Clearly,neither of the two previous realms has taken the Interpersonal aspect of packing nouns as their central issue.Comparatively speaking,it is in Systemic Functional Linguistics(SFL hereafter) that packing nouns are studied in a systematic and in-depth fashion.Packing nouns are found to be functionally active in Experientially reconstruing human experiences and Textually in establishing the semantic unity(i.e.,lexical cohesion) in discourse.It must be pointed out,however,that the Interpersonal function of packing nouns has been more or less overlooked since packing nouns are individual lexical items that can not be glossed under the Hallidayan Interpersonal structures(e.g.,Mood structure and dialogical structure).In the lexically-based Interpersonal framework originating from SFL,i.e.the Appraisal system,adjectivals are taken as the canonical type of resources for attitude expression,whereas packing nouns are merely resources for indirect realization of attitude in discourse and are thus again peripheral.In the new trend of corpus linguistics started three decades ago,considerable research efforts have been invested in packing nouns. Admittedly,the scope of the research objects of corpus linguistic studies by Sinclair,Francis, Bibber and Mahlberg,etc.coincide more or less with that of packing nouns,but these studies are concentrated mainly on the syntactic patterns of a number of packing nouns (such as thing,way and problem,etc.).Though Mahlberg makes excursions into the evaluative functions of 20 "general nouns"(i.e.,time nouns,people nouns and world nouns), his major concern is not the attitudinal characteristics of packing nouns,but the establishment of a textlinguistic framework for general nouns.What is common to all the previous studies is that they tend to overlook the Interpersonal aspect of packing nouns and thus few investigations have been systematically carried out with the purpose of examining packing nouns in terms of their status of attitude resources in discourse.However,the (traditional) grammatical,cognitive and semantic characteristics of packing nouns gained in previous studies are preciously helpful and illuminating for our understanding of the attitudinal status of packing nouns.Packing nouns are one of the reflections of packing phenomenon and strategy in actual language use.Packing in actual language use is pervasively embodied in our world experience.In the biological world,packing is an evolutionary strategy guaranteeing the survival of all species(including mankind as biological being).In the social world,packing is indispensable for transporting and selling products;and packing also plays an important role in social and religious organizations,even in high-tech field the epitome of which is the information technology.Packing in our experiential world presupposes packing material, the packed content and the packing relation.This experiential phenomenon is mapped into discourse as language structures:packing nouns being the packing material,stretches of discourse being the packed content and the packing relation being experiential identity and co-referentiality between packing nouns and the packed content.Cognitively,as categories at the superordinate level,the highlighting and collecting functions of packing nouns enables packing nouns to Interpersonally shadow the entities within their scopes. Semantically,packing nouns are a special group of nominals with unique semantic unspecificity.The semantic unspecificity of packing nouns is unique in the sense that it is not inherent but generated in nominalization processes,which are not only processes of objective abstraction,but also processes Interpersonally motivated.In other words,there are packing nouns with highly general Interpersonal information retained;there are also packing nouns where the Interpersonal information is missing out through the nominalization process.According to the presence or absence of Interpersonal information, packing nouns are divided as "attitudinal" and "non-attitudinal",both types playing an important role in attitude realization in discourse:Attitudinal packing nouns are used to explicitly inscribe attitude in discourse while non-attitudinal packing nouns are resources for implicitly invoking attitude in discourse.The theoretical reasoning based on the cognitive,semantic and informational characteristics of packing nouns shows that packing nouns have the potential of realizing attitude in discourse.For a full vision of the status of packing nouns as attitude resources in discourse,however,the attitudinal behavior of packing noun in actual use must be invested. A systematic investigation of the attitudinal behaviors of packing nouns requires two premises,i.e.,the research objects optimally representative and research methodology and procedures scientifically reliable.For the identification of optimally representative packing nouns,the 18 variations of the pattern N+be+cl,which is the most promising patterns among the five lexico-grammatical patterns coding the semantic co-referentiality and experiential identity between packing nouns and their packed content,are concordanced in British National Corpus World Edition(hence BNC in this dissertation) and 779 nouns are found to be used for packing.However,not all the 779 packing nouns occurring in the pattern N+be+cl are optimal representatives of packing nouns.With two scales,i.e.,the collocability(collocational strength) in the packing pattern N+be+cl being over 2 and the frequency within the range of the top 3000 most frequent words in actual use(cf.Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English,4th Edition;hence LDOCE4 in this dissertation),90 optimally representative packing nouns are identified and divided according the presence or absence of attitudinal information(viz.,the 14 "attitudinal" packing nouns and 76 "non-attitudinal" packing nouns).The scientific and reliable analysis of the attitudinal characteristics of packing nouns presupposes the right approach and the most revealing parameters.Arguably,to fully understand the attitudinal characteristics of packing nouns in discourse,the corpus-driven and corpus-based approaches are combined,and the 1Ls(i.e., the first left collocates of packing nouns) and the packed content are the contextual elements most revealing of the discourse prosody of packing nouns.The attitudinal features of the 1Ls and the content of packing nouns are both statistically calculable in terms of their frequencies.The investigation of 14 attitudinal packing nouns shows that "problem" nouns(i.e., problem,trouble,difficulty,mistake and danger) inscribe negative appreciation and thus invoke negative judgement and affect in discourse;"anxiety" nouns(fear,concern,worry) inscribe negative affect and thus invoke negative judgement and appreciation in discourse; Whereas "advantage" nouns(advantage,achievement,remedy,priority,lesson,challenge) inscribe positive appreciation and thus invoke positive judgement and affect in discourse. For the attitudinal values of attitudinal packing nouns are conspicuously observable,the attitudinal characteristics of the packed content are not bothered.The investigation upon the 76 non-attitudinal packing nouns does not present conspicuously observable attitudinal features as the groups of the 14 attitudinal packing nouns,but two general conclusion suggests itself from the meticulous observation of the 1Ls and packed content:(1) The majority of non-attitudinal packing nouns are not "attitudinally inert".Among the 76 non-attitudinal packing nouns,75 of them occur in contexts with positive or negative attitude.Only secret is found to occur in contexts completely neutral in attitude.(2) Among the 75 non-attitudinal packing nouns,some of them occur predominantly in contexts of negative attitude,some predominantly in context of positive attitude and some predominantly in contexts of neutral attitude.For the first two situations,the negative or positive attitudinal contexts potentiate or impute packing nouns with attitudinal values and thus enable them with the status of resources of attitude invocation in discourse.In the cases where non-attitudinal packing nouns predominantly occur in contexts neutral in attitude,packing nouns function mainly to afford the facts or events for the evaluations of the readers or hearers.This is where non-attitudinal packing nouns participate in strategy of affording attitude in discourse,allowing readers or hearers the highest degree of aligning or defying the speakers' or writers' attitude.The systematic investigation on authentic data from the well-balanced corpus BNC is enough to establish the status of packing nouns as resources for attitude realization in discourse.Theoretically,the exploration of the attitudinal function of attitudinal and non-attitudinal packing nouns broadens the scope of resources for attitude realization in discourse.Methodologically,the identification of packing nouns starting from the most promising lexico-grammatical pattern to the expected lexical items is different from the process starting from individual lexical items to the corresponding linguistic environments. Martin & White(2005:46) pointed out that it is difficult to derive corpus linguistic evidences in Interpersonal studies,the attitudinal analysis of packing nouns based on evidences from the well-balanced corpus BNC indicates the feasibility of introducing corpus linguistic methods in Interpersonal studies of language.While the objectives set at the beginning of this dissertation theoretically and descriptively achieved with the proceeding of the present study,it is still necessary to invest further research efforts in relevant issues such as enlarging the objects of investigation beyond the 90 packing nouns, investigating the comprehension dimension of the attitude trusted by the speakers and writers on packing nouns and comparing and contrasting the attitudinal characteristics of packing nouns in the English language and other languages in the world.