Analysis Of The Utterances Of The Heroes In Sense And Sensibility From The Perspective Of Appraisal Theory

Jane Austen,an outstanding realistic writer,published her first novel Sense and Sensibility in 1811 and portrayed many individual characters through their own vivid dialogues in this novel.Since its publication,an increasing number of scholars have studied it from feminism,irony and literary stylistics.Nevertheless,few scholars analyze the male characters within the framework of Appraisal Theory.Therefore,the study aims at analyzing the Brandon's and Willoughby's utterances from the perspective of Appraisal Theory to explore the two heroes' personalities and reveal their attitudes towards Marianne.The quantitative and qualitative methods are adopted together to analyze the two heroes' utterances within the framework of Appraisal Theory.The twelve chapters in Sense and Sensibility are selected as research data in this study,which can reveal the two heroes' attitudes towards Marianne.First of place,appraisal resources are marked and classified according to different criteria.By means of software Excel,the total numbers and percentages of appraisal resources in each volume are calculated and presented in the related tables.Finally,the study analyzes how appraisal resources are adopted to reveal Brandon's and Willoughby's personalities as well as their attitudes towards Marianne through providing concrete examples.Through the detailed analysis,the major findings are concluded as follows:(1)The two heroes' personalities can be revealed by means of the different distributions of appraisal resources.As for Attitude,judgment resources are more frequently employed by Brandon,but great amounts of affect resources are more preferred in Willoughby's utterance.In Engagement system,expansion resources appear 29 times in Brandon's utterance,while there are only 12 frequencies in Willoughby's utterance.Finally,in Graduation system,the majority is force resources in Brandon's utterance.But Willoughby uses a bit more focus resources,occupying 12.9%.(2)There is a change in the application of appraisal resources in the two heroes' utterances,which reveals the two heroes' attitudes towards Marianne.Negative attitude resources and force resources employed by Brandon gradually reduce.On the contrary,negative attitude resources and force resources utilized by Willoughby steadily soar.This indicates that the two heroes have opposite attitudes towards Marianne.(3)In terms of Attitude system,judgment resources take the highest proportion in Brandon's utterance,however,affect resources rank the first in Willoughby's utterance.With regard to Engagement system,Brandon uses more expansion resources than Willoughby.Therefore,we can see that Brandon is sensible but affectionate and Willoughby lacks sense and sensibility.Through the comparison between Brandon and Willoughby,the theme of the novel can be revealed and further sublimated.This study not only versifies that Appraisal Theory can be used as an effective tool to analyze Sense and Sensibility but also opens up a fresh avenue for scholars to study and analyze literary works.