The Study On Jinxin (PartB) In Mencius In The Perspective Of Appraisal Theory

Mencius, a Confucius representative figure of the Warring States period, is a greatthinker and educator in ancient China. He put forward a set of complete systems, inheritingand carrying the thoughts of Confucius, which had a tremendous impact on later generations.Mencius is the carrier and embodiment of the Confucius’s thoughts, which carries forward theConfucius’s thoughts and culture. Ever since the compilation of the Mencius, numerousscholars and researchers have been fascinated and have done research on it and obtained greatachievements. Their studies were mainly carried out from the perspective of annotation,philosophy, politics, and education. The academic study mainly focuses on the translation of itin terms of the text and translator about the Mencius. Some scholars make a study on Menciuswithin the framework of the Conceptual Metaphor. So far, there have been few studies onMencius from the perspective of Appraisal Theory.The Appraisal Theory, based on the Systemic Functional Linguistics which was putforward by Halliday, is a newly-developed lexico-grammatical framework for studyinginterpersonal meaning. It is the study of semantic value, concerned with appraisal resources ina text, including varieties of attitudes negotiable in a text. It is a breakthrough for studyinginterpersonal meaning in the discourse, and provides us a new suitable theoretical frameworkto interpret interpersonal meaning. Mencius is a classic book which records the words anddeeds of Mencius and his disciples. It is full of attitudes and appraisals that Mencius and hisdisciples offer regarding the doctrine of benevolence government, leaning, teaching and so on.So the Appraisal Theory offers us a proper framework to interpret the appraisal meaning inMencius.There are seven chapters including14books totally in Mencius. In the present study, the author employs concordance tool of AntConc to do the quantitative and qualitative analysis ofthe distribution features of appraisal resources by choosing the summary and the essence ofMencius—the Book14as the sample. According to our analysis, we can find that positiveappraisal resources take up a great proportion and play an important role in abridging theinterpersonal gap among Mencius and his disciples and the putative addressees. With asignificant proportion of attitudinal resources, especially Judgments, Mencius construes apositive and upright ideology and thereby establishes a community of shared positive socialvalues advocated. In order to align more addressees to this positive community, the addressors,mainly Mencius, are good at employing the Engagement resources and Graduation resources.Under the heteroglossic backdrop, more resources of dialogistic contraction are employed tosuppress or rule out alternative positions and make addressors’ positions more warrantable,acceptable and persuasive. Meanwhile, resources of dialogistic expansion are employed toadmit the existence of alternative positions, to take an open stance, and to invite more readersto join the negotiation, and thereby align then into the community of shared social valueespecially the ideas of Benevolent Government that Mencius and his disciples advocate.Under graduation, Force resources are employed much more than Focus resources and thehigh intensity words are employed with high frequency to raise the attitude and effectivelyamplify Mencius and his disciples’ voice. Finally, more addressees will be aligned with thehigh persuasiveness.The present study is to explore appraisal resources in Book14of Mencius and analyzethe appraisal meaning within the framework of Appraisal Theory which may broaden thetheoretical studies on application. Apart from that, this paper aims to interpret Mencius fromthe new theoretical perspective and improve the development of the study on Mencius in thefield of language studies. It is hoped that the present study will test the feasibility of theapplication of Appraisal theory and provide us with a new perspective for textual analysis and the interpretation of Chinese classics. In a broad sense, it can also contribute a lot to carryingforward traditional culture and building a harmonious society.