Analysis Of The Personality Of The Heroine In The Novel Of Jane Eyre In Light Of The Appraisal Theory

This thesis mainly addresses the problem of the application of Appraisal Theory to analyzing characters of literature works .The Appraisal Theory is about the linguistic resources of the particular intersubjective relationship and ideology expressed or negotiated in the text / by the interlocutors . Within the framework of Appraisal Theory, the focuses are on the linguistic resources of evaluation, attitude and affect, and on the interpersonal resources of the propositions in the text.The appraisal theory, its motivation coming from the movement of"Right Writing"in 1980s and 1990s, has appeared over a period of about 15 years as a result of work conducted by a group of researchers led by Professor James Martin of the University of Sydney. Research in developing the Appraisal theory is now being carried out by researchers based at various centres both in Australia and now internationally. It works within the framework of Systemic-Functional Linguistics.Appraisal itself includes three interacting domains ---ATTITUDE, ENGAGEMENT and GRADUATION according to Martin's study.Attitude is concerned with our feelings, including emotional reactions , judgements of behaviour and evaluation of things. Engagement deals with sourcing attitudes and the play of voices around opinions in discourse. Graduation attends to grading phenomena whereby feelings are amplified and categories blurred.Attitude is itself divided into three regions of feeling , AFFECT , JUDGEMENT and APPRECIATION. Affect deals with resources for construing emotional reactions and registering positive and negative feelings : do we feel happy or sad , confident or anxious , interested or bored ? Judgement is concerned with resources for assessing behaviour according to various normative principles . It deals with attitudes towards behaviour , which we admire or criticise , praise or condemn . Appreciation looks at resources for constuing the value of things , including natural phenomena and semiosis ( as either product or process ) , according to the ways in which they are valued or not in a given field .The recent studies of the Appraisal Theory find its inadequacy in the application of the Appraisal Theory on analyzing characteristics in novels . This paper aims to make up for this inadequacy in applying it on the analysis of characters of the novel Jane Eyre written by famous English novelist Charlotte Bronte who lived in Victorian period . This paper includes the following five parts :Chapter 1 is a brief introduction including the Appraisal Theory itself and its origin (mainly referring to Halliday's Systemic-Functional Linguistics) . The goal and targets involved in this paper are proposed .Chapter 2 talks about literature review of the research perspectives of the Appraisal Theory and the literary work Jane Eyre . The author suggests that a new approach will be added to the study of stylistics and the application of linguistic theories will go into a broad field if the Appraisal theory is applied to analysing the characters of Jane Eyre . Chapter 3 takes the focus of this thesis . It goes to the detail analysis of the characteristics in terms of the Appraisal Theory (mainly from the perspective of the subsystem of Attitude) . Since Attitude comprises three sub-systems : namely , Affect, Judgement and Appreciation , this part analyzes the characteristics from these three aspects , and illustrates the ways of the realisation of the Appraisal Theory in characteristic analysis .Chapter 4 is the discussion on some other structures untouched in Martin's Framework when he talks about evaluation resources . The discussion manifestates that some specific structures also have the effects to express attitude , especially parallel structures .Chapter 5 makes a conclusion about the whole thesis , and points out the inadequacy of the application of the Appraisal Theory to analyzing characters .