| Appraisal Theory proposed by Martin (2000) has been widely considered as an effective tool to explore the interactive nature of discourse from the aspect of interpersonal meaning. The present study follows the trend of discourse analysis within the framework of APPRAISAL Systems with a special focus on attitudinal resources of English multi-party conflict talk. Based on a specified multi-party conflict talk corpus built in the study of Zhao (2015), the present study adopts a quantitative approach with the assistance of UAM Corpus Tool to investigate the distribution of attitudinal resources in multi-party conflict talk on one hand, and qualitative approach to interpret the distribution features on the other. The analysis is made from the perspectives of Move distinctions and setting distinctions. Major findings of the present study suggest that Appreciation resources and positive resources are the most frequent resources in the whole multi-party conflict talk. The interactive nature of multi-party conflict talk exposed by the distribution features in Move 1, Move 2 to Move 3 is that the proportion of Affect resources in Move 2 is greater than that of Move 1 and Move 3, and the proportion of negative resources in Move 3 is greater than that in the other two Moves. Moreover, comparative analysis between the institutional talk and the semi-institutional talk suggests that the proportion of positive resources in the institutional talk is larger than that in the semi-institutional talk and attitudinal resources are more unevenly distributed in the institutional talk than that in the semi-institutional talk.Results of the present study would possibly extend the application scope of Appraisal Theory and help to explore the systemic attitudinal meanings in conflict talk whereby the interactive nature of conflict talk is exposed. Its implication might be of use in improving Chinese English learners’ awareness of the interactive nature and contextual features of multi-party conflict talk. |
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