| Evaluation of discourse is one of the major trends in analyzing texts. During thepast decades, scholars have conducted various studies to investigate different genres.This thesis is to explore, from a linguistic perspective, the construction of positivestance in the introduction about the author in English novels. The introductory sectionprovides basic information about the author and generally comments on the author‘smajor achievements, mainly in literature. Through this part, readers are able to get ageneral impression of and establish a certain position towards the author.The data for the study includes thirty pieces of the author introduction from threepublishing firms—Bantam, Penguin and Vintage. All the sample articles are carefullyand comprehensively analyzed based on Martin‘s Appraisal framework and presentedin the Appendix1. The linguistic construal of positive stance is investigated through adetailed study of interpersonal meanings, drawing upon the framework of AppraisalTheory with Systemic Functional Linguistics as the theoretical point of departure.Quantitative approach is used to consider various appraisal resources and relevantdistributions from three perspectives—Attitude, Engagement and Graduation. Bymeans of qualitative approach, the thesis further discusses the strategies thatpublishing firms adopt to model the positive stance towards the author. Relevantexplanations are presented respectively on the characteristics of biographical recounts,the propagation of prosodies, and the process of taking an evaluative stance throughplaying different voice roles and through navigating a reading path via alignment andopposition.The overall purpose of the thesis is to find out evaluative preferences exhibitedin this kind of text-type and probe into the process of establishing the positive stanceacross the whole text. Therefore, the objective of the study is not simply to makegeneralizations about how publishing firms manipulate different appraisal resources.Moreover, it concerns the evaluative strategies encoded in the texts to develop thepositive stance publishing firms take in writing the introductory part of Englishnovels. As the analysis indicates, in the author introduction, more judgement andappreciation resources are used to evaluate the author and to assess his or her literaryachievements. Substantive force resources are used to upscale the attitudes expressedin the discourse. While contracting dialogic alternatives in presenting factual events,publishing firms tend to welcome more other positive appraisal resources viaexpanding dialogic alternatives to make evaluations and assessments. In this kind ofgenre, publishing firms propagate prosodies randomly, continuously and wholisticallyto act as a recorder and an interpreter to make alignment with readers who share thisview and at the same time to gain recognitions from those who are not in agreement.The thesis contributes a theoretical explanation of appraisal in the introduction ofthe author, an area where few studies have been conducted. The thesis also contributesto functional linguistic explanations of the ways publishing firms manage to conveytheir positions and values. |
