A Contrastive Study Of AFFECT Resources Between English And Chinese Sitcoms

The sitcom, a discourse full of emotional and attitudinal values, has attractedmuch attention of researchers. A great many substantial studies have been conductedon this genre from various perspectives such as, pragmatics, systemic functionallinguistics, stylistics and translation. However, the sitcom has been rarely studiedfrom the point of Appraisal Theory, not to mention the systematic studies of theAFFECT system in the sitcom.Appraisal Theory is a relatively new development and enrichment ofinterpersonal meanings in systemic functional linguistics (SFL). AFFECT, thesubsystem of ATTITUDE，is defined as “evaluation by means of the writer/speakerindicating how they are emotionally disposed to the person, thing, happening or stateof affairs.”(Martin&White,2005) Although, as a branch of ATTITUDE, it has beenapplied in some discourse studies, it has been rarely applied in the study of the sitcom.And there is no one who conducts a contrastive study of AFFECT resources betweenEnglish and Chinese sitcoms.In the present study, the author conducts a contrastive analysis of AFFECTsystem between English and Chinese sitcoms from3perspectives, namely, AFFECTtypes, AFFECT modes and AFFECT loadings, attempting to explore the differencesand similarities of the distributions of AFFECT resources between English andChinese sitcoms. The study chooses30episodes from Friends (24episodes) andIpartment (6episodes)(the total number of English word is64,671, and Chinesecharacter is66,525). With the help of UAM CorpusTool2.8.7, quantitative approach isemployed in the process of analyzing the samples. On the basis of the research designand data analysis, the present study has reached the following conclusions:The similarities between the two corpora are as follows: As to the mode ofAFFECT, the frequencies of Inscribed and Invoked AFFECT are nearly the same andInscribed AFFECT takes the dominant position; in terms of the loading of AFFECT, positive expressions of AFFECT are more often employed than negative expressionsof AFFECT; the distributions and frequencies of Complex AFFECT, High AFFECT,and Authorial AFFECT between English and Chinese sitcoms are similar to eachother; the tendencies of AFFECT resources are similar to each other; compared withother AFFECTs, Mental AFFECT, Authorial AFFECT, Low AFFECT are morefrequently used in both corpora.The differences are shown below: As to the mode of AFFECT, the frequency ofpositive expressions of AFFECT in Chinese corpus is much higher than that inEnglish corpus while the frequency of negative expressions of AFFECT in English ismuch higher than that in Chinese corpus; AFFECTS used more often in Chinesecorpus than in English corpus are In/security, Dis/satisfaction, Behavioral AFFECT,Undirected AFFECT and Realis AFFECT; while AFFECTS of higher frequency inEnglish corpus than in Chinese corpus are Happiness, Basic AFFECT, MentalAFFECT, Directed AFFECT, Low AFFECT, Irrealis AFFECT, Non-authorialAFFECT.In addition, this study also reveals that some Chinese expressions of discoursemarkers on the lexical level are difficult to be categorized, which needs further study.This study, with AFFECT system from perspective of AT, conducts a tentativecontrast study on AFFECT resources between English and Chinese sitcoms. It extendsthe application of AFFECT under AT and perspectives of emotional study and provesthe feasibility of AT in sitcom genre. Meanwhile, it can inspire and facilitate theunderstanding and appreciation of AFFECT expressions in sitcoms, which in turn mayeffectively improve the deep understanding of AFFECT resources of mass culture.Most importantly, it will improve English or Chinese learners’ accuracy of AFFECTexpressions in communication, and translation of languages, which might further helpboth language learners and cross-cultural researchers reach a deep comprehension ofEnglish and Chinese.