A Study Of Explicit And Implicit Attitude Resources In English Academic Book Reviews From The Perspective Of Appraisal Theory

As an important sub-genre of academic discourse,academic book reviews perform the functions of introduction,recommendation and evaluation,which contain a wealth of attitude resources that can show authors’ attitude and convey attitudinal meanings.Proper use of attitude resources can not only help to construct authors’ attitude,but also enhance the persuasiveness and credibility of academic book reviews.At present,while there are many studies on attitude resources in academic discourse,few are specifically involved in academic book reviews.Moreover,existing studies mostly focus on explicit attitude resources that are overtly expressed in the discourse.Few scholars have explored implicit attitude resources which appear neutral but can still convey authors’ attitude,and paid attention to the juxtaposition of explicit and implicit attitude resources.In view of such vacancy,this thesis,based on Appraisal System proposed by Martin and White,concentrates on its core-attitude system,and makes an attempt to explore explicit and implicit attitude resources in English academic book reviews.In this study,a total of 60 English academic book reviews in applied linguistics published between 2020 and 2021 are randomly selected as a self-built corpus,in which data annotation and data calculation are conducted with the help of UAM Corpus Tool.The following research questions are tried to be answered through a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis:(1)How are explicit and implicit attitude resources distributed in academic book reviews?(2)What features and realization devices do explicit and implicit attitude resources present in academic book reviews?(3)What interpersonal functions does the juxtaposition of explicit and implicit attitude resources fulfill in academic book reviews?The main findings of this study are:(1)Academic book reviews are rich in explicit attitude resources,among which appreciation resources accounting for 77.3% are the most frequently used,followed by judgement resources accounting for 13.5%,and then affect resources only accounting for 9.2%.Moreover,there are a certain number of implicit attitude resources employed in academic book reviews.The means of realization are arranged from high to low in frequency,followed by counter-expectancy,concession,intensification and reformulation.Their distributions suggest that the authors strive to provide an objective and impartial evaluation of the academic books.(2)Explicit attitude resources in academic book reviews are primarily reflected by overt attitudinal words,such as the high-frequency words useful,valuable,practical,thorough,believe,etc.,most of which carry positive attitudinal meanings.Implicit attitude resources,on the other hand,are mainly realized by cohesive devices,which are embodied by conjunctions or adjuncts such as but,however,although,despite,only,in fact,actually,etc.Due to the lack of overt markers,the identification of attitude conveyed by implicit attitude resources is highly context-dependent,i.e.,whether the polarity of its attitudinal meaning is positive or negative needs to be confirmed according to the specific context in which it is located.(3)Through an analysis of the juxtaposition of explicit and implicit attitude resources,it is found that by using a combination of the two kinds of attitude resources,authors can create a more nuanced and complex portrayal of their attitude towards the books,fulfilling two interpersonal functions.One is attitude enhancement that can emphasize or strengthen the authors’ positive or negative attitude.The other is attitude reversion that can downplay or even reverse the authors’ positive or negative attitude,thus enabling authors to construct their true attitude more effectively.This study,to a certain extent,enriches the research on attitude resources in academic discourse and offers some useful expressions for authors to flexibly employ explicit and implicit attitude resources.Moreover,the research findings are expected to provide some guidance for academic book review writing.