The System of Engagement in a Sample of Prose Fiction and the News

Hadidi, Yaser; Mohammad Baheri, Leila

|
|
|
How to cite
RIS EndNote BibTeX APA MLA Harvard Vancouver
|
Share

	The System of Engagement in a Sample of Prose Fiction and the News
Article 4, Volume 5, Issue 11, Summer and Autumn 2012, Page 45-63 PDF (329.61 K)
Document Type: Research Paper
Authors
Yaser Hadidi ; Leila Mohammad Baheri
English Department of the University of Tabriz
Abstract
Emerging within Systemic Linguistics, Appraisal/Evaluation is a framework for analyzing the language of evaluation, providing techniques for the systematic analysis of evaluation and stance as they operate in whole texts and in groupings of texts. There are three systems in the Appraisal framework: Attitude, Engagement, and Graduation. This study sets out to analyze the use of the system of Engagement within a sample of English Literature (prose fiction) and the News (news articles). Engagement is a medium through which the speaker or the writer engages dialogistically with others (i.e., the addressees, within the process of evaluation). A corpus of 20,000 words was selected from each genre, involving five cornerstones of short fiction and a collection of news articles from CNN, Reuters, BBC, Daily Mail and Yahoo News. The study sheds light on the fact that both genres are strikingly close in using the four subsystems of Engagement, and both are inclined towards dialogic expansion, albeit for different generic reasons, with dialogic contraction taking a backbench. Appraisal as a whole is a promising model to explore texts in different genres, paving the way for richer more illuminating analyses of the interpersonal semantics operating in them.
Keywords
Appraisal/Evaluation; Engagement; dialogic expansion; dialogic contraction


References
Christie, F. & Martin, J. R. (eds). (1997). Genres and Institutions: Social Processes in the Workplace and School. London: Cassell (Open Linguistics Series). Gee, J. P. (2005). 2^nd ed. An Introduction to Discourse Analysis. London: Routledge. Halliday, M. A. K. (1994). An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Hodder Arnold. Halliday, M. A. K. & Matthiessen, C. M. I. M. (2004). An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Hodder Arnold. Iedema, R., Feez, S. & White, P. R. R. (1994). Media Literacy (Write it Right Literacy in Industry Research Project – Stage 2). Sydney: Metropolitan East DisadvantagedSchools Program. Martin, J. R. (1992a). Macro-proposals: meaning by degree. In W. C. Mann & S. Thompson(eds), Discourse Description: Diverse Analyses of a Fund Raising Text. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 359–95. Martin, J. R. (2000a). Beyond exchange: appraisal systems in English. In Hunston, S. & Thompson. G. (eds), Evaluation in Text. Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 142–75. Martin, J. R. & White, P. R. R. (2005). The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Matthiessen, C. M. I. M. (1995). Lexicogrammatical Cartography: English Systems. Tokyo: International Language Sciences Publishers. Read, J. & Carroll, J. (2012). Annotating Expressions of Appraisal in English.Text. 46:421-447. White, P. R. R. (2011). Appraisal. In J. Zienkowski, J. Östman, & J. Verschueren (eds), Discursive Pragmatics (pp. 14-36). John Benjamins B.V.
Statistics Article View: 720 PDF Download: 575