A Contrastive Analysis Of Appraisal Resources In Chinese And English Book Reviews In Linguistics

On the basis of the Appraisal framework in Systemic Functional Linguistics, this paper examines 30 Chinese academic book reviews (CABR) and 30 English academic book reviews (EABR) respectively, which have been collected from the prestigious journals in linguistics both in China and Western countries, aiming to reveal the similarities and differences of the realization of Appraisal strategies between CABR and EABR and explore the causes underlying the findings, in hopes of making certain enlightenment on the development and application of this theory as well as foreign language teaching.Within the Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, interpersonal meanings at the level of lexicogrammar are analyzed as choices in systems of mood and modality, which has tended to omit a detailed focus on the semantics of evaluation. The Appraisal theory proposed by Martin and White in the 1990s extends the scope of functional model of interpersonal meanings to the level of discourse semantics alongside with the alternations of the speaker's stance with his/her ongoing engagement in the discourses, which is interpretative. Thompson points out 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"(1996: 65), and book review, the genre which reveals not only how reviewers express their personal judgments on the reviewed book but also how they handle the complex interpersonal relationship, is no exception. Therefore, the contrastive analysis of book reviews under the Appraisal system is meaningful.Both qualitative and quantitative analytical methods are applied in the thesis to make contrastive analysis of each sub-system of Appraisal framework—Attitude, Engagement and Graduation as well as their respective sub-categories in detail. The analysis shows that the reviewers'preference of use of modes of Appraisal resources is a little different although there are certain similarities shared by both Chinese and English reviewers in the application of Appraisal resources in book reviews. Compared with English reviewers, Chinese reviewers would like to use more objective resources such as Appreciation and more positive evaluation such as positive Raise than their English counterparts. The factors contribute to the differences in reviewers'preferred Appraisal strategies are discussed as well to provide some explanations underlying the research findings.The contrastive analysis of book reviews within the Appraisal framework plays an important role in the understanding of interpersonal meanings in discourses, and it proves the effectiveness of this theory which is rooted in English in realization of Appraisal meanings in different discourses under various cultural contexts, especially in Chinese discourses. Moreover, this study provides insights into reading and writing book reviews for foreign language learners, and it is hoped that this research can shed a little light on the development of academic evaluation and communication widely.