Interpersonal And Attitudinal Meanings Of English Tourist Information On The Internet-Appraisal Analysis

English Tourist Information on the Internet is a very important kind of practical writing in English. Many applied linguists have studied it from the perspective of translation and culture contrast. It is well known that that kind of texts has their particular functions of information, persuasion and attraction. In order to realize the function of information, the texts seem to be objective and impersonal. On the other hand, those texts appear to be subjective and convey interpersonal and attitudinal meanings so that they can realize the functions of persuasion and attraction. And the latter is the focus of this study. Whether or not those texts convey interpersonal and attitudinal meanings? How to analyze those texts with the Appraisal theory? How does the English Tourist Information on the Internet convey its interpersonal and attitudinal meanings with various Appraisal resources? This thesis answers those questions. As a result the interpersonal and attitudinal meanings of the English Tourist Information on the Internet are examined.Undoubtedly, this is about the functions of language. This thesis, using empirical method, studies the Appraisal values of 18 pieces of English Tourist Information randomly selected from the Internet from Appraisal System and obtains the table of the distribution of every resource in the corpus. With the means of quantitative and qualitative analysis, the thesis explores the interpersonal and attitudinal meanings in English Tourist Information on the Internet, then comes to the conclusion as the following:It is practical to analyze the English Tourist Information on the Internet with the tool of the Appraisal. Those texts are interpersonal and attitude-loaded. Almost all the categories of Appraisal resources, which convey the interpersonal and attitudinal meanings, are involved in the English Tourist Information on the Internet. Among these resources, Appreciation, Modality and Force appear much frequently.The following are the specific organization of this thesis.Chapter 1 serves as the introduction of the content of the thesis. It briefly introduces the theory framework and the statistical analysis tool of UAM Corpus Tool, the data of the study, and the general idea of each chapter.Chapter 2 is the literature review of the Appraisal Theory, which is the theoretical basis of the whole study. Thompson points out in Evaluation: an Introduction that evaluation is the core part of any text, and any discourse analysis must refer to the evaluation in it, from which, we can know the importance of evaluation. In this chapter, the author also introduces the origin and framework of the Appraisal Theory. The theory put forward by Martin is the further development of interpersonal meta-function. Appraisal Theory includes three systems: Attitude, Graduation and Engagement, each of which has further sub-systems. Meanwhile, the author makes a literature review of studies on Applications of the Appraisal Theory.Chapter 3 introduces the definition, classifications and functions of English Tourist Information. What's more, the author also briefly reviews the studies previously done by some linguists on this theme.Chapter 4 introduces the methodology of this study. Firstly, the author introduces the sources, classifications of the datum in this study. Then, the author lists the purposes of the study in detail. Finally, the study procedures are also listed.Chapter 5 is the main body of the study. With the statistical analysis tool of UAM Corpus Tool, a table displaying the distribution of each category of the Appraisal resources in the 18 pieces of English Tourist Information on the Internet is obtained. Through qualitative analysis, the interpersonal and attitudinal meanings of the English Tourist Information on the Internet are explored. Then the thesis comes the conclusion that almost all the Appraisal resources are involved in the information, among them Appreciation, Force and Modality appear more frequently.Chapter 6 is the conclusion o the thesis. The author points out the major finds, implications and limitations of the study. In the end, the author gives a suggestion for further research, that is Computational application of Appraisal Theory. Because it can speed up the time-consuming process of textual analysis and be of great help to the analysis of certain patterns.