An Analysis Of The Self-identification Of Children’s Growing-up In Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland From The Perspective Of Appraisal Theory

Up till now, many researchers have been done on the exploration of the fairy-tale Alice’sAdventures in Wonderland from various aspects, such as the contrastive analysis of differenttranslation versions of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the study of the translation ofnursery rhymes, the language characteristics of the Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, thebeauty of absurdity, the writing feature, the projection research of the Alice’s Adventures inWonderland and so on. However, as for the study of the theme in the children’s literature fromthe perspective of Appraisal Theory，especially for the theme of the self-identification ofChildren’s Growing-up in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the research is kind of limited.The fairy tale Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland focuses on the theme of theself-identification of Children’s Growing-up. In the story, the protagonist Alice is curiousabout everything in the world, believing that the world is composed of a serious of distinctlogic, and everything in the world follows the physical laws. However, all of her knowledgeand cognitions seems nonsense after she enters into the wonderland, which makes herconfront the crisis of “self-identification” from time to time. The moment she falls down therabbit hole, she is at loss, while, at the end of the story, she dares to show her protest againstthe queen. During this process, the anxiety and fear accumulated in her mind are released.Getting rid of the crisis of self-identification loss, Alice gains self-realization to some extentin the process of growing-up.Based on the theoretical framework of Appraisal Theory, the present study makesattempts to analyze the self-identification of children’s growing-up in Alice’s Adventures inWonderland from the perspective of appraisal theory with the quantitative and qualitativeapproach. The appraisal analysis of the present study is based on the three sub-systems:attitude, engagement and graduation. Based on the analysis of the affect, judgement,appreciation, force and focus etc., the thesis tries to apply a practical and objective approachto analyze the theme of the children’s literature.The research mainly contains five different parts:The introduction, which incorporates research background and purpose, researchquestion and the method, will be given in the first part. The second part is the literature review.The research of the appraisal theory at home and abroad in recent years will be introduced.And the current study situation of the literary work of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland willalso be offered. The third part is the introduction of the theoretical framework in which thethree sub-system of Appraisal Theory will be introduced, as well as the sub-categories of eachsub-system. This chapter will provide a reliable theoretical framework for the following part.The fourth part is the most important part, the specific analysis of Alice’s Adventures inWonderland will be conducted through the analysis of the distribution of attitude, engagementand gradation resources, according to which, the study will conclude how the theme of the children’s literature is realized with the help of Appraisal Theory. The last part is theconclusion. The major findings as well as the application of the Appraisal Theory in thechildren’s literature will be presented and explained. Besides, some limitations andsuggestions will be provided in this chapter.By analyzing the appraisal resources in the story of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderlandwithin the framework of Appraisal theory, the present thesis offers a summary of somefindings. Firstly, the distribution of appraisal resources of the three subsystems differs fromeach other. Among the three sub-systems, the appraisal resources of Attitude, compared withEngagement and Graduation, taking up a leading status. And we find that most attitudinalvalues in this story are negative. Secondly, the distribution of the different three kinds ofappraisal resources in different sections differs a little. Thirdly, the distribution of thesub-system resources differs from section to section. It has a close connection with thedevelopment of the character’s psychological status. Therefore, according to these findings, itcan be concluded that there is close relationship between the distribution of the appraisalresources and the development of the plot as well as the theme of the tale.