The Attitudinal Realization Of Movie Reviews From The Perspective Of Appraisal Theory

With the boom of movie industry, movie reviews are also becoming more popular among audience and professional reviewers. Most of mass-media outlets or websites provide movie reviews with a special column in western countries, for movie reviews are considered as a driving force for movie industry and a guide for movie consumption.Appraisal theory is developed from Systemic-Functional Grammar(SFG). It is proposed by Martin and other scholars and regarded as an extension of interpersonal function of SFG. Appraisal theory is concerned with how the language is employed to evaluate, to express attitude, to construct textual personae and to manage interpersonal positioning and relationships. Appraisal theory is composed of three subsystems: Attitude, Engagement and Graduation.The aim of the thesis is to apply the Appraisal theory to the analysis of inspirational movie reviews from the perspective of the Appraisal system. It intends to obtain the distributions of attitudinal resources in movie reviews under Appraisal theory, how these resources can be realized in movie reviews and how these resources take effect and what kind of messages are given to the readers. The present study will make a tentative analysis of inspirational English movie reviews under attitude system of Appraisal theory, with the aim to reveal the general features of attitudinal realization in inspirational English movie reviews.The thesis selects 30 inspirational movie reviews as samples which are taken from the official website of New York Times: the author adopts both qualitative and quantitative research methods and concentrates on the analysis of attitudinal values in inspirational English movie reviews. This thesis makes a contribution to genre movie reviews with Appraisal theory. Firstly, attitudinal resources are widespread in inspirational English movie reviews. All of the three subsystems of attitude resources are employed to help the reviewers to fulfill the communicative, informative and interpersonal functions in inspirational English movie reviews. Secondly, it is noticed clearly that the judgment and appreciation resources are more preferred than affect resources in the analysis of inspirational English movie reviews in accordance with the data collected, which indicate that the reviewers focus more on the human behaviors rather than the feelings of people and try to be more objective. Thirdly, the analysis of attitudinal resources in inspirational English movie reviews suggest that the employments of Affect, Judgment, and Appreciation resources are to realize the interpersonal function, in other words, to achieve the informative and persuasive function of interpersonal function.