| Movie review is a very important component of film industry. When one is facedwith thousands of films and he is not sure which one he should choose to see, oneway is to refer to the movie review. First, movie review is not only a sub-category ofjournalist discourse, but also an essential tool for the media to show its comments ona given movie. Second, movie review reflects how good or bad a movie is and it isthe miniature of a movie. In this way, it tells readers whether or not a movie is worthseeing. So movie review is a kind of persuasive discourse, and the appraisal resourcesit contains are of research values. Under the guidance of Appraisal Theory, this studyaims to analyze the distribution and the interpersonal meaning of appraisal resourcesin the selected movie reviews.Appraisal theory is put forward by J.R.Martin and Peter White in the1990s. It ismodeled on Systemic Functional Grammar and it is the improvement of interpersonalmeaning. After Appraisal Theory is put forward, people have done much research.They employ Appraisal Theory to analyze book reviews, football match reviews,news report reviews, and so on. Yet, little appraisal research has been done in moviereview, let alone any research on the interpersonal meaning of movie review withinAppraisal Theory. So this study chooses seven movie reviews from the well-knownEnglish newspaper The Guardian. The seven movie reviews are about moviesdirected by Ang Lee---the first Chinese-American director who wins the Oscar Awardfor the best director. The study analyzes the appraisal resources of the seven moviereviews both qualitatively and quantitatively under the framework of the AppraisalTheory. At last, it is pointed out that the distribution of the appraisal resources and theinterpersonal meaning of the appraisal resources.Through the research, the results are as follows: all the three sub-categories ofAppraisal Theory show up in the seven movie reviews and they all can help to realizeinterpersonal meanings. The difference lies in their distribution. In terms of attituderesources, appreciation resources appear most frequently with a proportion of44.40% among all the attitudinal resources. The positive appreciation resources (80.95%) areemployed more often than the negative appreciation resources (19.05%). The affectresources account for the smallest part among the attitudinal resources, it accounts foronly20.93%and it shows that the movie review writers want to give the readerssome objective impression. The judgment resources (34.67%) lie in betweenappreciation resources and affect resources. In terms of engagement resources,dialogic contraction (71.03%) outnumbers dialogic expansion (28.97%). This showsthe potential authority of the movie review writer. In dialogic contraction, disclaimaccounts for the largest part, because the movie review writer prefers to use deny andcounter. In dialogic expansion, entertain is frequently used in movie review. It isprobably because the movie review writer wants to leave space for different voicesand to build a harmonious interpersonal relationship with the readers. In terms ofgraduation resources, force accounts for95.4%while focus accounts only for4.6%.Force is much more preferred to focus and the movie review writers prefer to sharpentheir attitudinal stands. This shows the writers’ authority and also realizes theirpurpose of persuasion effectively.It can be inferred from the above research results that Appraisal Theory is apowerful tool not only to express the writer’s attitude and stance, but also to build upsolidarity with readers. Appraisal Theory is very significant in understanding theinterpersonal meaning of movie review. |
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