A Study On The Jurors’ Attitudes In Twelve Angry Men From The Perspective Of Appraisal Theory

Twelve Angry Men is a classic play that explores legal justice and American jury system.In the play,a boy growing up in the slum is accused of murdering his father.Concerning the case,the twelve jurors,who do not know each other and are from various walks of life,go through several round of intense discussion and voting,and finally reach a unanimous verdict that the boy is not guilty.Appraisal theory(AT),proposed and developed by James Martin,is used to theoretically explores how language users evaluate things and express their attitudes.AT consists of three subsystems,that is,attitude,engagement,and graduation.The attitude system is the core of AT.With the attitude system of AT as the theoretical framework and the text of Twelve Angry Men as the data,this research attempts to answer the following three questions.1.How are attitude resources distributed in Twelve Angry Men?2.What are the attitudinal changes of the jurors at different rounds of voting in the play based on the analysis of their attitude resources?3.What are the functions of attitude resources for the understanding of the play?In the research,the UAM Corpus Tool(3.3v)is used to annotate the attitude resources in the play,then the annotated data is classified and summarized,and a detailed analysis is conducted of the distribution of attitude resources in the play and the changes of the jurors’ attitudes,leading to the following findings.1.There are totally 310 attitude resources in Twelve Angry Men.Of these resources,the playwright uses judgement resources(151)most,which account for48.71% of the total.Appreciation resources(97)rank second,accounting for 31.29%.Affect resources(62)are the least in number,taking up 20.00%.Besides,these resources are divided into positive and negative ones.There are 113 positive resources,including 36 affect resources,28 judgement resources,and 49 appreciation resources.There are 197 negative resources,including 26 affect resources,123 judgement resources,and 48 appreciation resources.The statistics show that the jurors mostly judge from the dimension of judgement resources.Another point out of the statistics is that appreciation and affect resources take up a low proportion,which conforms to the objectivity and impartiality required by the legal context.It can also be seen that the proportion of negative resources is higher than that of positive resources,which shows that the jurors hold more negative attitudes.2.There are changes in the attitudes of the eleven jurors.Juror Eight,the only juror who holds the view throughout that the boy is not guilty,shows in his language the positive inclination to discuss the case,the positive judgment and appreciation to raise reasonable doubts.The changes in the attitudes of the other eleven jurors are specifically represented by their positive inclination of affect to have further discussion of the case,their positive judgement and appreciation of the case,their support to the jurors who vote “not guilty”,the rebuttal against the jurors who have negative attitudes,and their tiredness of endless arguments.3.Attitude resources plays an important role in the understanding of the play.Firstly,it can help to convey information,i.e.,to reveal the heated arguments,conflicts and emotions of the jurors.Secondly,it can help to reveal the characteristics of the jurors.Thirdly,it plays an important role in developing the plot.