Interpersonal Meaning Construction In The Analects Translation: An Exploration Of Attitude System Under Appraisal

The Analects, a book recording the sayings and deeds of Confucius and his disciples, is a concentrated embodiment of Confucianism. It has profound influence on Chinese culture and enjoys a significant status in the world. Scholars have studied it from different aspects and made great achievements. However, there are a few studies on The Analects and its translation within the framework of interpersonal function.Appraisal Theory (also Appraisal System), focusing on all negotiable attitudes in a text, is the extension of studies on the interpersonal meaning within Systemic Functional Linguistics. It is used to analyze discourse of various texts, but mainly centers on applied texts, a few on ancient books and translation studies.This thesis takes chapters of Book 1 Xue Er in The Analects and the corresponding English translation by Arthur Waley as data for analysis, for the discussion of the interpersonal meaning construction in Chinese and English versions under Attitude system within Appraisal. The study adopts the quantitative analysis and qualitative induction, makes a comparative study in the hope of finding the similarity and difference in constructing interpersonal meanings between Chinese and English texts, and discusses possible factors causing the change of appraisal scale of the translation. The comparative study will be made in a descriptive way.The research shows that, Affect, Judgment and Appreciation under Attitude exist in The Analects, among which the Judgment resource is dominant. There are more positive and explicit attitudes. Through these attitudinal resources, Confucius and his disciples express a positive ideology and narrow the interpersonal gap between the addresser and the addressee and align more addressees. On the whole, most interpersonal meanings of attitudinal resources are reconstructed in the target text but the appraisal scale changes, some higher or lower, and some interpersonal meanings are not constructed in the translation. From this aspect, there is still room for improvement in the translation. The possible causes affecting the interpersonal meaning construction in the translation include factors of the source text, factors of the translator, and factors of the target language and culture. For example, characteristics of the classical Chinese and the profound thoughts of The Analects, the translator's ability of understanding and purpose of translation, and the different values, may influence the appropriateness of the interpersonal meaning construction in the target text.This research explores the interpersonal meaning construction in The Analects and its translation from the perspective of Attitude within Appraisal, which provides a new theoretical perspective for studies on The Analects, further confirms the applicability, feasibility and interpretive power of the Appraisal System in interpersonal function, and provides implications for literature interpretation as well as translation studies and practice.