An Analysis Of Interpersonal Meaning Of Engagement Resources In English Movie Review:An Appraisal Approach

Appraisal Theory, developed from the interpersonal studies within Systemic-Functional Linguistics, is a new lexical-grammatical framework which attends to all sorts of negotiable attitudes in discourses. The whole Appraisal Theory consists of three interrelated sub-systems:Attitude, Engagement and Graduation. Although the theory has been applied to the studies of different discourse types, such as hard news, editorials, public speech and academic book reviews, it is rarely used in the analysis of engagement resources in English movie review. Therefore, the present study intends to use the Engagement sub-system as its theoretical framework and attempts to explore the interpersonal meaning of engagement resources in English movie review, aiming for engagement resources commonly used in the composition of English movie reviews as well as the strategies through which interpersonal functions are realized. At the same time, from the heteroglossic or dialogistic perspective of Engagement, the present study can further demonstrate the viewpoint that no utterance, including mass-media discourses, is interpersonally neutral or absolutely objective.This study attempts to answer the following questions:(1) What are the common features of engagement resources in English movie review from the Appraisal perspective?(2) What is the frequency of distribution of these engagement resources respectively in English movie review?(3) How are interpersonal functions realized through these features of engagement resources in English movie review?In order to make the research findings more reliable, the ten English movie reviews used as corpus for analysis are all chosen from the websites of two major authoritative newspapers-The New York Times and The Washington Post, with each five articles. Combined with quantitative and qualitative research methods, all engagement resources are analyzed and discussed respectively. In the quantitative method, common features and the frequency of distribution of each engagement resource in English movie review can be seen, based on which their interpersonal functions are discussed by a qualitative means.Here are the major findings of the present study. First, all kinds of engagement resources are used in English movie reviews, yet with uneven occurrences. From the aspect of tolerance for alternative viewpoints, dialogic contraction far outnumbers dialogic expansion; from the aspect of the source of intersubjective stance, intra-vocalization far outnumbers extra-vocalization. Second, the frequency of distribution of each engagement resource in English movie review is as follows: dialogic contraction70.8%, dialogic expansion29.2%, intra-vocalization95%and extra-vocalization5%. At last, in terms of their interpersonal functions, dialogic contraction is used by movie critics as the strategy of alignment through challenge to dialogically alternative positions while dialogic expansion as the strategy of alignment through tolerance for alternative positions; intra-vocalization is employed by movie critics as the strategy of alignment through display of professionalism while alignment in extra-vocalization through use of support in the advancement of authorial positions.