An Appraisal Perspective On English Academic Book Review

As a sub-genre of academic discourse, academic book review has received less attention for its unremarkable features as reference literature. It, nevertheless, "plays an important role in supporting both the manufacture of knowledge and the social cohesiveness on disciplinary community" (Hyland, 1996:43). Reviewer with implicit authority evaluates books positively or negatively from academic perspective. On the other hand, in response to the underlying challenge on the reader's part, reviewer has to balance a reassuring authoritative display of his opinion/attitude with a concern to be accepted by the reader as true or accurate. All these constitute the complexity of interpersonal meaning of EABR.The thesis aims to analyse how linguistic elements realize the Appraisal meaning by making Appraisal analysis on the linguistic book reviews samples. Central to the research in this thesis is Martin's Appraisal Theory, which includes three sub-systems of Attitude, Engagement and Graduation. Appraisal system, a functional model of interpersonal meaning at the level of discourse semantics, is the semantic resources used to negotiate emotions, judgments and valuations. An Appraisal analysis provides tools well suited to capturing the interpersonal that are central to inter-subjective positioning.This thesis examines 30 English book reviews extracted from famous linguistic journals with qualitative and quantitative analytical approaches. It shows Appraisal resources in English academic book reviews and finds the way a book reviewer takes through different Appraisal resources to position his/her voice with respect to the various propositions and proposals conveyed by the book, readers and other book reviewers, therefore, negotiate an interpersonal space for his/her own positions within that diversity. The findings also include the following: 1. The...