Appraisal Theory And Its Application In English Résumé Writing

One of the basic functions of language is interpersonal function. In the realization of interpersonal meaning evaluation plays an important role. Thompson said that evaluation is a central part of the meaning of any text and that any analysis of the interpersonal meanings of a text must take it into account.Appraisal Theory, sometimes also called Appraisal Systems, is a newly developed theoretical framework which mainly aims at evaluative resources in texts. Its range covers all evaluative uses of language, including those by which speakers/writers adopt particular value positions or stances and by which they negotiate these stances with either actual or potential respondents.Since its birth, Appraisal Theory has been applied in many texts of different genres and types. This thesis attempts to apply it into a new domain that it has never set foot on—résumés. Through analyzing the evaluative resources in résumés, the author hopes to find the operating principles of Appraisal Theory in résumétexts.Through a quantitative and a qualitative study of the appraisal resources in 64 English résumés and 8 cover letters written by American job-hunters, it has been found that there are many interesting features in the evaluative pattern of résumés. Three variables are also recognized to account for these features. They are generic factor, the factor of different professional fields and structural factor. All the sub-systems of Appraisal, namely Attitude, Engagement and Graduation,show systematic variation in terms of the three variables. From the operating models of Appraisal in résumés, we can work out that the résumé...