
对珍珠港演说的功能评价.pdf
7页Nov. 2008, Volume 5, No.11 (Serial No.59) Sino-US English Teaching, ISSN1539-8072, USA 30 Towards text-theme from appraisal theory: A functional approach to Pearl Harbor address to the nation WU An-ping (Foreign Languages College, Ningbo Polytechnic, Ningbo 315800, China) Abstract: Text-theme, the writing or speaking motive, is construed before creation at the basis of a writer’s or speaker’s background and typical cognitive structures. This paper attempts to explore text-theme in the Pearl Harbor address to the nation within the framework of appraisal theory founded by James Martin, et al., the excavation is centered on how the grammatical resources of appraisal can disclose the addressor’s evaluation of the text-theme. The aim for the study is to testify the operationality and practicability of appraisal theory towards the exploration on text analysis. It is hoped that the theoretical and practical significance in the present exploration of text-theme can provide inspirations and novel insights in the realm of English language teaching and text analysis. Key words: text-theme; attitude; address 1. Introduction Text-theme is the kernel meaning in a text, which is the writing or speaking motive construed before creation on the basis of a writer’s or speaker’s background and typical cognitive structures. Hence, it is the intention or purpose of writer’s or speaker’s creation, which is a semantic concept. It can be divided into two kinds, explicitness and implicitness. As for the explicitness, it refers to the specific linguistic entity, maybe some words, certain grammatical elements or certain clauses, which can encode the text-theme in the text. With regard to the implicitness, it is the text-theme which surpasses the linguistic surface meaning, and is encapsulated the general sense or purpose for the text by reader or listener after having finished reading or listening. To date, no studies have been attempted to probe text-theme within appraisal theory. The researcher will ground the analysis and discussion on the problem on what is the function of the appraisal towards the exploration of text-theme in a text and chooses the address Pearl Harbor address to the nation to apply appraisal theory to the excavation on how the grammatical resources of appraisal can disclose the addressor’s evaluation of text-theme. 2. Appraisal theory Appraisal, one of the sub-systems in interpersonal metafunction, maintained by Thompson (1996/2000, p. 65), is “a central part of the meaning of any text which we should take into account”. Martin has contributed a lot in the evaluative lexis expressing the writer’s or speaker’s opinion very broadly, the good or bad parameter. Martin (2003, p. 22) has proposed that, “Appraisal is concerned with evaluation; the kinds of attitudes that are negotiated in a text, the strength of the feelings involved and the ways wherein values are sourced and readers WU An-ping (1976- ), female, M.A., lecturer of Foreign Languages College, Ningbo Polytechnic; research fields: systemic-functional linguistics, discourse analysis. Towards text-theme from appraisal theory: A functional approach to Pearl Harbor address to the nation 31aligned’. From the proposal by Martin, it is constituted of three broad semantic domains, “attitude”, “graduation”, and “engagement” (Martin, 2000). We will explore attitude, to find out how the expression of attitude is implicated with text-theme in the address. As to another two sub-systems of engagement and graduation, we’d like to leave them for further study. 2.1 Affect Affect is the evaluation by dint of the speaker/writer indicating how they are emotionally disposed to the person, thing, happening or state of affairs and can be realized through mental process of reaction, mainly by means of verbs of emotion; through attributive relational of affect, mainly by means of adjectives of emotion; through adverbs, typically circumstances of manner, and through nominalization (LI Zhan-zi, 2002). Martin (2003, pp. 60-61) has provided us a panoramic view of the specific categorization of affect. 2.2 Judgment It serves to evaluate human behavior positively and negatively by dint of a set of institutionalized norms. Under the attitudinal judgment, we may appraise behavior as moral or immoral, as legal or illegal, as socially acceptable or unacceptable, as normal or abnormal, etc. according to the work from the media research reported in Iedema, et al (Martin, 2000); Judgment can be sub-divided into two broad categories of social esteem and social sanction. For the value of social sanction, it involves an assertion that some set of rules or regulations, more or less inscribedly codified by the culture, are at issue. These rules may be legal or moral. From the perspective of religion, to breach social sanction will be seen as sins, and from the viewpoint of legality, it will be seen as crimes. The report by Iedema,。












