Abstracts In Master Theses: An Appraisal Perspective

Appraisal Theory presents a system of semantic resources that explore, describe and explain the way language is used to evaluate, to adopt stances to construct textual personas and to manage interpersonal relationships. The three subsystems of Appraisal—Attitude, Engagement and Graduation—are explored in the present study. Based on contributions of previous studies and by making an Appraisal analysis of native English speakers' (NS) master thesis abstract samples and those of nonnative English speakers' (NNS), this thesis aims to analyze how linguistic elements realize Appraisal meanings, and to compare how NNS approximate to and differ from NS in realizing Appraisals.The first part of the thesis is Introduction, in which the background, purpose and major contributions of the research, as well as the organization of the thesis, are put forward. The remainder of the thesis consists of three chapters plus a conclusion. Chapter One presents a detailed literature review which summarizes previous studies on abstracts, on Appraisal Theory and on NS and NNS. Chapter Two explains the theoretical framework—the Appraisal Theory. The subsystems of Attitude, Engagement and Graduation are illustrated in great detail. Moreover, due to the great influence of Bakhtin's Dialogism, Intertextuality and Heteroglossia on Appraisal Theory, these three concepts are also presented. Chapter Three analyzes the realizations of Appraisals in both NS and NNS corpora quantitatively and qualitatively. Moreover, a comparison of the frequency of Appraisal resources in the two corpora is made. In addition, the theoretical and pedagogical implications of the study, as well as the possible factors affecting NNS' use of Appraisals are tentatively explored at the end of this chapter. The conclusion sums up the similarities and differences between NS and NNS in realizing Appraisals and presents the implications and limitations of this study.On the one hand, the research findings of this thesis indicate that NNS writers are aware of and capable of, to some extent though, employing Appraisal meanings to interact and align solidarity with their readers. On the other hand, the findings also reflect that the Chinese postgraduates still have difficulties in achieving appropriateness in their wording in Appraisals. This inappropriateness may attribute to the complexity of Appraisals, the influence of cultural differences and the low language proficiency of NNS.