Discourse Analysis Of From Dawn To Decadence From The Perspective Of Appraisal Theory

Jacques Barzun,a famous American cultural historian,has made outstanding contributions to the writing of cultural history.From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life,1500 to the Present(2000),(From Dawn to Decadence for short below),became a bestseller as soon as it came off the press,won the National Book Award in the United States,and was also called the “cultural Bible of twentieth Century” by critics.This gigantic project has been brewing in his mind when the author was 27,but when the first word was put down on paper,he was already 83;and it took him another ten years to finish the book.As the epitome of the author's academic achievement,it embodies the author's attitudes on western culture and history.Appraisal is a system of interpersonal meanings,which aims at negotiating people's social relationships,by telling their listeners or readers how they feel about things and people.The Appraisal theory includes three sub-systems: Attitude resources,Engagement resources,and Graduation resources.Although this theory has been widely applied to various types of discourse analysis,such as advertising,news,political speeches,etc.,it has,to my knowledge,never been used in history field but on one occasion.Although From Dawn to Decadence is a study of culture and history,which is supposed to be objective,it is still suitable to be analyzed by Appraisal theory,since the author does not simply provide facts,but also uses various Appraisal resources for his own voices,making judgments and evaluations.This thesis aims at analyzing From Dawn to Decadence from the perspective of Appraisal theory,in order to study the interpersonal meaning and make the book better understood.Through the method of stratified random sampling,altogether eight chapters are selected randomly as the sample texts,which are 225 pages in all,accounting for 28% of the entire book.In terms of data collection,the artificial tagging methods have been adopted,with the help of the tool BFSU Qualitative Coder 1.0.Based on this analysis,it is found that the proportion of Graduation resources in From Dawn to Decadence is the highest,up to 45.15%.Through the combination of Force and Focus means,especially the extensive use of Raise and Sharpen resources,the author's voices are made firmer.In addition,the Raise and Sharpen resources can effectively help the author to highlight the main attitudes.And the high frequency use of Graduation resources can show more details and facts to readers,increasing the accuracy and rationality of text.The second is Engagement resources.The author uses Heterogloss to convey his views and attitudes,which makes his point of views more convincing and authoritative.The Attitude resources are the least,and the Positive attitudes are the main factors,which help the readers to set up positive attitudes,reducing the distance from the readers,and making the author's point of view better accepted.Among the attitude resources,Process resources are the most,up to 80.85%.The author widely uses Process resources to convey people's attitudes and emotions,reducing the subjectivity of the text;and the Attitude resources are mostly indirect resources,so that the objectivity of the text is stronger.The significance of this thesis is as follows:First,this study may help readers understand From Dawn to Decadence more deeply,and interpret the author's cultural view and historical view more clearly;second,this study may provide a new analytic tool and research perspective for the studies of historical and cultural texts;finally,in this study,the evaluation research of From Dawn to Decadence may provide some reference for expanding the application scope of Appraisal Theory.