Positive Discourse Analysis Of Father-Daughter Dialogues In The Teleplay Little Lover From The Perspective Of Attitude System

This thesis positively analyzed father-daughter dialogues of Little Lover in light of attitude system.Positive discourse analysis was put forward by Martin in an international meeting in 1999 in Manchester,England.After it was put forward,many scholars shift their attention from critical discourse analysis to PDA,since the purpose of the latter is to build a harmonious and beautiful world through addressing issues.In addition,family plays are always popular among different ages,children,teenagers,adults and even the old.The modern family teleplay Little Lover is a work mainly introducing the father-daughter relationship in daily life.In order to find out how their interpersonal meanings are realized by dialogues in the teleplay,two research questions were put forward in this thesis.(1)How are the attitudinal resources distributed in father-daughter dialogues in the teleplay Little Lover?(2)How do the attitudinal resources used in the dialogues effectively serve the characterization and the reflection of father-daughter relationship in the teleplay?To answer these two research questions,attitude system was applied to serve as the theoretical framework to discuss father-daughter views,attitudes,and standpoints.It has three subsystems,affect,judgment,and appreciation.Each subsystem also has its own classifications.Therefore,in this thesis,attitudinal resources collected from the teleplay were analyzed based on each subsystem.Besides,qualitative and quantitative methods were adopted to analyze research materials.There are 40 episodes in the teleplay Little Lover.Each episode lasts about 40 minutes.Father-daughter dialogues were picked out and classified according to each subsystem.Through quantitative analysis,distributions of attitudinal resources and frequency of their occurrences were concluded,which answered the first research question.Through qualitative analysis,those attitudinal resources illustrated how three subsystems construed discourses,which answered the second research question.Here are three result findings of this thesis.Firstly,there are 659 attitudinal resources in father-daughter dialogues.Negative ones account for 61.61% while positive ones account for 38.39%.This reflects that they often let out negative attitudes,judge bad behavior,and appreciate things negatively.But negative attitudinal resources don't often mean negative.On one hand,the father cares for his daughter's future so much that he is always dissatisfied with her and perhaps deals with things inappropriately.On the other hand,due to his control,the daughter is also not content with him.Hence,she also applies a number of the negative in her utterances.But in some cases,she loves him and then her words contain positive attitudinal resources.Secondly,in the three subsystems judgment attitudinal resources account for the largest,which is 44.46%.The second largest is affect,28.98% while the smallest is appreciation,25.56%.The father is a daughter-circling father and would like to decide everything for her.Hence,he likes to judge her behavior.On the other hand,the daughter is an independent girl who wants to free from her father's control.Therefore,she also has to fight against his management in response to his behavior.Lastly,attitudinal resources can be used both directly and indirectly.The application of the former positively or the latter negatively can better contribute to their relationship.The characters of father and daughter are similar since from the data,it can be shown that direct attitudinal resources are far bigger than the indirect.This reflects that they tend to utter direct resources,which to some extent,can be harmful to their relationship.All in all,how discourses express interpersonal meaning is demonstrated and it also provides a new perspective for the relationship between father and daughter.