Appraisal Analysis Of English Business Complaint Letter

In this thesis, English business complaint letters will be studied from the perspective of appraisal theory with the attempt to discover the distribution of appraisal resources in the texts and to reveal how English business complaint letters promote the interpersonal relationship of communication and negotiation between letter writers and readers. The appraisal analysis of English business complaint letters may help people who are engaged in international business activities and learning the application of English business letters understand English business complaint letters better and offer some references for the writing of English business complaint letters.Appraisal theory was put forward as a new development of interpersonal meaning in Systemic-Functional Linguistics in the1990s by J. R. Martin. It is also called appraisal system, which is mainly made up of three subsystems-attitude, engagement and graduation. The theory researches speaker\writer’s attitude and position toward something through analysis of the appraisal resources in discourses, revealing the interpersonal relationships between speakers\writers and their true or potential listeners\readers. Since its birth the theory has aroused widespread interest from many scholars and learners at home and abroad, and has been applied to different types of discourse analyses.In this thesis the author examines thirty pieces of English business complaint letters by the means of textual analysis. Through the analysis of the appraisal resources in each text on attitude, engagement and graduation, the author found out their operating pattern and characters in the most English business complaint letters: firstly, appraisal resources emerge in almost each text, including attitude, engagement and graduation; secondly, the number of different appraisal resources distributes unbalanced in texts. The percentage of resources on attitude is much more than those on engagement and graduation; the second is resources on engagement and those on graduation are the fewest. Finally, the sub-systems of the three types of appraisal resources take up unique distribution as well:①in the resources on attitude, the percentage of judgment is the largest one, mainly in positive and active tone. It emphasizes "capacity"; affect resources are the second, focusing on positive "inclination" and negative "satisfaction"; the appreciation resources are the fewest, mainly on "reaction", which is oriented to interpersonal relationship,②in the resources on engagement, the number of heterogloss is by far more than that of monogloss. And "dialogic contraction" is major part in heterogloss, while "dialogic expansion" is the minor one.③in the resources on graduation, force resources are used more than focus resources, especially the upscaling force resources.In a word, on one hand, it is the unique characters of English business complaint letters that determine the distributional situation of appraisal resources in texts. On the other hand, it is proved that when writing English business complaint letters, letter writers try to make full use of appraisal resources not only to express their attitudes of dissatisfaction or complaint but also to maintain interpersonal relationships with their letter readers so as to achieve the business negotiating purpose.