A Study On Appraisal Resources In The Great Gatsby From The Perspective Of Appraisal Theory

As one of the representative writers of the "lost generation" in 1920 s,F.Scott Fitzgerald has an incomparable position in the history of modern American literature.His classic work is The Great Gatsby.In the previous literature reviews,many scholars study this work from the perspectives of feminism,symbolism and so on,but few explore it from the perspective of linguistics.With the help of Martin’s Appraisal Theory,this thesis selects Chapter 2 and part of Chapter 7 of the novel as the data to explore the distribution and realization way of appraisal resources in the corpus.Appraisal Theory is a horizontal and vertical extension of Halliday’s interpersonal function.It includes three subsystems: Attitude,Engagement and Graduation.Attitude involves Affect,Judgment and Appreciation.Engagement consists of monoglossia and heteroglossia.Graduation includes Force and Focus.At present,the theory is widely used in discourse analysis.Based on the Appraisal Theory,this study selects Chapter 2 and part of Chapter 7 of The Great Gatsby as the corpus to study the following two questions:(1)What is the distribution of attitudial resources in The Great Gatsby?(2)How are these resources in the selected data linguistically achieved?By quantitative and qualitative analysis,the study draws the following conclusions:(1)The appraisal resources are very rich in the selected data of The Great Gatsby.Among them,Attitude resources and Graduation resources are more than Engagement resources.In the analysis of Attitude resources,Affect resources take up the first place,Judgment resources occupy the second place,and Appreciation resources are at the least.As for Engagement resources,the contractive resources are more than expansive resources.The analysis of Graduation resources shows that Force resources are higher than Focus resources.(2)Taking the three systems of Appraisal Theory as the theoretical framework and the words given by Martin as the reference,we choose the words with the same semantic meaning to analyze the corpus of this thesis,which helps us to interpret this novel from the perspective of linguistics.Therefore,we can understand the personalities of these characters in the novel,the attitude of the author or the speaker towards the events of the characters.Also it reveals the theme of the novel in a better way.It provides a new perspective for the study of literary works,and further confirms the strong explanatory power of Appraisal Theory to literary discourse.