| Appraisal Theory,as the development of interpersonal function of Halliday's Systemic-Functional Linguistics(hereafter SFL),is proposed by James Martin in the 1990 s.It consists of three sub-systems—attitude,engagement and graduation.In this theory,language is considered as a kind of resource which plays an important role in evaluating stances,constructing textual personas and negotiating interpersonal relationships.In this thesis,the whole three systems will be adopted to analyze the heroine's language features in Nathaniel Hawthorn's masterpiece—The Scarlet Letter.The Scarlet Letter as Nathaniel Hawthorn's masterpiece has become the subject of discussion since its appearance in 1850.Researches about the heroine are in particular.Due to its emphasis on the psychological activities and characterization,it makes the novel full of interpersonal meanings.Thus,some of scholars have started to adopt Appraisal Theory to their study of this novel.But,most of them just apply one of the three systems to their analysis,which ignores the interaction among the whole three systems.So,this thesis attempts to analyze the heroine's language features in The Scarlet Letter in the light of Appraisal Theory to explore the interpersonal meaning of heroine's language as well as digging out the change of her mental condition and personality.In the present research,dialogues between Hester with other male protagonists,especially Chillingworth and Dimmesdale will be selected.Based on the statistics and analysis of the data,the heroine—Hester's language features are as below:Attitudinal resources are highly applied by Hester in the novel,especially judgment resources which are largely applied to make her utterance more objective and convincible.By contrast,affect resources which will make utterance subjective and emotional are used less.Besides,negative attitude resources,negative judgment resources in particular are employed frequently to reveal Hester's negative evaluation to her addressees.Concerning the application of engagement resources,dialogic contraction resources are employed far more than dialogic expansion resources by Hester.The numerous usages of dialogic contraction resources reflect Hester's intention of closing down her space of negotiation with her interlocutors as well as her desire to dominate her conversation with others.In this novel,the appraisal meaning of graduation system is mainly realized through force system.And repetition,comparative and superlative are the main realizations.Like attitude system,engagement system and graduation system are integrated,among which graduation resources scale the degree of attitude and engagement resources,numerous application of graduation resources amplify the degree of Hester's proposition as well as raising her attitude.From selected resources and distribution features,we can see that there's gradual increase of the three kinds of resources respectively.The gradual increase of attitude resources,especially judgment resources,reveal Hester's promotion of her confidence;gradual increase of engagement resources,dialogic contraction resources in particular reflect the increase of Hester's desire to dominate her conversation with others;and the increase of graduation,force resources in particular illustrate the enhancement of the degree of Hester's attitude.All reveal the change of Hester's mental condition and the gradual enhancement of her rebellious spirit.Through above analysis of heroine's language resources and interpersonal meanings,Hester's gradually matured rebellious spirit and free thought as well as the change of her mental condition is revealed.And it also proves that Appraisal Theory is an effective approach to understand and appreciate literary works,providing a new view to analyze the literary works. |
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