A Study On Soapy's Tragedy In The Cop And The Anthem: An Appraisal Approach

The analysis of the literary works has been existed, but up to now the studies of them are mainly from the perspective of the literary criticism and the stylistics. From the perspective of linguistics, literature is one of the discourses. In this thesis, a tentative study of the short story The Cop and The Anthem written by O·Henry is made in the framework of Martin's Appraisal theory. How are appraisal resources used to analyze the discourse like the short story? What are attitude, engagement and graduation resources expressed in the novel? What is the proportion of the appraisal resources distributed in the novel? How is appraisal theory used to analyze the tragedy of the main character Soapy? The questions above will be answered in the thesis.The Appraisal theory which developed on Halliday's the Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) is used widely in the analysis of different kinds of discourse, especially in the analysis of media discourse, which is the expansion to the interpersonal meaning. The theory is proved not only in its systematics but also its applicability.The analysis of the short story in the framework of the Appraisal theory is entirely feasible. Via the analysis of the appraisal resources in the short story The Cop and The Anthem , every kind of realization can be found in the discourse. In the three sub-systems, attitude resources take up the largest proportion, graduation resources rank in the second place and judgement resources take up the smallest proportion.In a word, the thesis attempts to use Martin's appraisal theory to analyze the short story The Cop and The Anthem, so that we can explore the main character Soapy's tragedy by making an analysis of attitude, engagement and graduation embodied in The Cop and The Anthem from the sub-systems of the Appraisal systems. The thesis will further prove the validity and practicability of Appraisal theory, and it will be an effective method and complement to the analysis of literary works, at the same time, the short story will be well interpreted by the method of using Appraisal theory.