| Investigations of various texts are made under the theoretical framework of Appraisal Theory in the past decade, ranging from media text (Iedema et al., 1994; White, 1998a; Wang, 2004b ) to history text (Coffin, 2002), from academic writings to literary works. It is said that if there is no attitude, there is no viewpoints and thus no evaluation. Thus scholars at home and abroad contribute to the development and consummation of this ongoing systemic theory, which takes similar systemic structure to SFL but provides different, or more delicate, perspectives of evaluation. It consists of three sub-categories, i.e. Attitude, Engagement, and Graduation. The theory is vigorous and often adopts both qualitative and quantative approaches, and therefore provide us with a conclusion either reasonable or objective.Besides, theoretical developing and textual analyzing are reciprocal, and thus each time one makes progress, the other will follow. The study employs the data selected from a Chicana growth fiction-The House on Mango Street written by Sandras Cisneros-with reasons.To begin with, the second climax of Women's Rights Movement in the 1970s in the United States certainly has great influence on emerging the writing of this fiction. The peaceful fight for Chicana's voice through the childlike language makes it printed on the course book of high schools in America, where dominated by the white culture. Recently, another historical event, namely, the S. Amendment 4046, finally brings English into the national language of the U. S. A. (Chen, 2007) Besides, Hispanics' English writing style is worth mention in U.S. for the large proportion it has in whole population. All this drives us to exploring the attitude of this peculiar group and considering the relationship between the writer of the fiction and its readers.The hypothesis of the thesis is that the appraisal resources can not only be positive factors of characteristics of literature works but also be means by which the narration of different ethnic groups is realized. With the help of statistic instrument SPSS 13.0, the thesis chooses 30 texts from this 44 vignettes work, as an exemplification to get the answer to the following research questions:(i) How are the Appraisal resources distributed in the text?(ii) How are the Appraisal resources realized in the text?(iii) How do the distribution and realization of Appraisal resources contribute to consolidate the solidarity between Chicana's standpoints and putative readers?The results of this study reveal that attitudinal resources precede other resources with a relatively high proportion of 38.28%, which implies the salient position of attitudinal meaning in the APPRAISAL Systems. Engagement and Graduation also play irreplaceable roles holding the percentage of 29.21% and 32.51% respectively. However, the Attitude subsystem demonstrates a scattered distribution and gently transition, except for the highlights of invoked Attitude (26.62%) and reaction parameter (20.76%), as well as the absence of positive veracity. With lesser parameters in Engagement subsystem, it is not so scattered as in Attitude. It also has two salient parameters, i.e. monogloss (20.69%) and disclaim (37.93%). Within Graduation subsystem, up-scaling takes a percentage much higher than down-scaling, while quantification are more than intensification.As a Chicana feminist masterpiece, the realizations of appraisal resources are found differing from the patterns in media text and academic ones that have been explored by scholars. The resources in question are mainly realized by simple words or implied by lexical metaphors rather than certain sentence patterns because of the story telling nature and the positioning of textual voice. It can be noticed that repetition of simple words is often taken as intensifier as a significant way of Graduation realization, distinguishing from adult fiction.By realizing three fundamental functions of evaluation, i.e. to adopt stance, to organize text, and to manage interpersonal positioning and relationship, Appraisal resources in the novel consolidate the alignment between the author and putative readers. It can depend, not on questions of agreement/disagreement, but on tolerance for alternative viewpoints, and the communality into which diversity of viewpoint is recognized as natural and legitimate. Thus the thesis accomplishes its mission of applying the ongoing Appraisal Theory into another register, that is, marginal minority women in patriarchy society, and accounts for the evaluative resources in a systemic way.Alongside with the stated theoretical findings, this study also lead to better understanding of the culture and ideology of Chicana and is supposed to do good to writing training of second language learners. |
PDF Full Text Request