Evaluation Theory "Francis McConnell 's Short Happiness Happiness"

The appraisal theory is a new vocabulary grammar that is an extension of interpersonal function theory in systemic functional linguistics. It mainly refers to attitude and emotional strength in order to shorten the distance between the writer and reader, which consists of attitude, engagement and graduation This thesis takes The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber as the corpus and employs quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze the character dialogue in the novel in order to reveal the relationship between heroes and the characteristics of them, which will contribute to a deep understanding of the stylistic and thematic. Through the research, we find: Firstly,the change of the marital relationship, the employment relationship and the romantic relationship between heroes can be revealed by analyzing the distribution of positive and negative attitudes. There are more Affect resources than those in Judgment and Appreciation so that Affect is the most direct expression in attitude evaluation.Secondly, The growth of Macomber, which is from timid to tough, is deeply expressed by analyzing his characteristics with the help of combing the Attitude System and the Engagement System. Thirdly, analyzing the Force resources in Graduation System can show the personality transformation of Margret, which is from cold and heartless to nervous and tender. Therefore, this thesis interprets the novel from a linguistic point of view and further proves that the Appraisal Theory has a strong explanatory power of literary texts, which not only contributes to the practice of the Appraisal Theory, but also contributes to linguistics and literature teaching, and it can also help students better understand and appreciate the literary texts from linguistic perspective.