A Study Of The Attitude Resources In The College English Textbook A Glimpse Of Chinese Culture(Revised Version)

Teaching materials play an important role in the whole process of education.At present,the scholars at home and abroad mainly study English textbooks from the perspectives of Appraisal Theory,needs analysis and critical discourse analysis to explore the influence of English textbooks on teachers’ teaching ability and students’ learning ability,the applicability of textbooks and how to explore new teaching methods with the help of textbooks.The research contents concern about the exploration of teachers’ teaching ability,students’ learning ability,textbook applicability and teaching methods exploration,etc.The studies on college English textbooks are far more than that on middle school English textbooks and postgraduate English textbooks.The types of College English textbooks mainly include college graduates English textbooks,linguistics textbooks,business English textbooks,ESP textbooks,College English writing textbooks and so on.However,there are few studies on Chinese cultural textbooks.Only a few scholars have studied the content of traditional medicine textbooks and ancient Chinese textbooks.Therefore,the studies on Chinese cultural textbooks in linguistics still needs to be supplemented.Appraisal Theory is used to analyze the lexical applications in discourses.Previous studies on Appraisal Theory mainly focus on news discourse,literature discourse,advertising discourse,however seldom applied to Chinese cultural textbooks.Chinese cultural textbooks are rich in evaluative languages,and Appraisal Theory can be used to analyze the application of vocabulary and interpersonal meanings in this kind of discourse.Under this research background,this thesis attempts to apply the Attitude System of White and Martin’s Appraisal Theory to study the Chinese cultural textbook A Glimpse of Chinese Culture(Revised Version).The author intends to depend on UAM corpus tool to analyze the types,distribution and interpersonal meanings of attitude resources in this textbook.This thesis will discuss the two research questions: 1.What attitudinal resources are used in the textbook A Glimpse of Chinese Culture(Revised Version)and how are they distributed? 2.What interpersonal meanings are constructed by attitudinal resources in the textbook A Glimpse of Chinese Culture(Revised Version)?Through the data collection,the following two conclusions are drawn: on one aspect,for the types and distribution of attitudinal resources in this textbook,three types of attitude system “appreciation”,“affect” and “judgment” are all applied,respectively accounting for 49%,30% and 21%.According to White and Martin’s classification of attitude system,“appreciation”,“affect” and “judgment” have branch features to express the specific attitudes towards people and things.“Appreciation” can be divided into three branches: “reaction”,“composition” and “valuation”,among which the“valuation” expressions account for the most with 48.47%;the proportion of “reaction”is second to “valuation”,accounting for 45.87%;the lowest proportion indicating“composition” resources is 5.66%.The resources of “affect” are in the middle of these three sub-systems.They are mainly composed of four types of features,namely“inclination”,“happiness”,“security” and “satisfaction”.Among these four features,there are more about “happiness” and “inlination”,accounting for 37.76% and 32.02%respectively.“Security” and “satisfaction” have similar percentages,respectively 17.87%and 12.35%.“Judgment” evaluations account for the least of the three sub-systems,mainly focusing on the praise of people’s character and quality,which can be divided into “social esteem” and “social ranction” with the proportion of 75.72% and 24.73%in “judgment” resources.On the other aspect,the interpersonal meaning conveyed by attitudinal resources can be divided into four parts:(1)highlighting cultural values;(2)enhancing aesthetic experience;(3)creating empathy atmosphere;(4)providing moral guidance.The cultural value and aesthetic education are embodied through“appreciation” resources.Among them,the cultural value is mainly realized through the “valuation” in the Appreciation sub-system,and the aesthetic education is mainly reflected through the “reaction” and “composition” of things.Affect resources create empathy and enhance the attractiveness of this teaching material,so as to achieve the effect of increasing reading interest.For the guidance of moral education,this textbook take the Judgment evaluations of historical personage indirectly carry out moral education for readers,so as to reveal the educational meaning of the textbook.Theoretically,this study takes Chinese cultural textbooks into the application of Appraisal theory and explores Chinese cultural textbooks from the perspective of linguistics.Practically,this study provides the teachers a method to transmit Chinese culture depending on specific attitude resources and interpersonal meanings,so as to enrich the teaching methods;in addition,this study provides the thinking of interpersonal meanings for the compilation of Chinese cultural teaching materials,which present the teaching contents more perfectly and comprehensively through specific interpersonal meanings.