An attitudinal study on american and vietnamese governments reponse to the covid 19 pandemic in news reports

ABSTRACT The study applied Appraisal Theory developed by Martin and White 2005 as a framework for the investigation into the American and Vietnamese governments' response to the COVID-19

BÙI THỊ TÙNG THI

AN ATTITUDINAL STUDY ON THE AMERICAN AND VIETNAMESE GOVERNMENTS’ RESPONSE

TO THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC IN NEWS REPORTS

Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201

Supervisor: Võ Duy Đức, Ph.D

BÙI THỊ TÙNG THI

PHÂN TÍCH NGUỒN NGỮ LIỆU THÁI ĐỘ TRONG CÁC BÀI BÁO THỂ HIỆN PHẢN ỨNG CỦA HAI CHÍNH PHỦ MỸ VÀ VIỆT NAM

ĐỐI VỚI ĐẠI DỊCH COVID-19

Chuyên ngành : Ngôn ngữ Anh

Mã số : 8220201

Người hướng dẫn: TS VÕ DUY ĐỨC

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

I certify that the thesis An Attitudinal study on the American and Vietnamese governments' response to the COVID-19 pandemic in news reports is my work

No other person's work has been used without acknowledgement in the paper

This thesis has not been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any university

Binh Dinh, 2021

Bùi Thị Tùng Thi

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my thesis supervisor, Mr Vo Duy Duc, PhD for his experienced guidance and valuable comments on my work I am also indebted to him for his helpful and timely response to my questions

I would also like to express my thank to the lecturers who have given

me exciting knowledge and a great source of inspiration

I am also grateful to Quy Nhon University, Post-graduate Department, and Foreign Languages Department for the administrative assistance

Finally, I must express my very profound gratitude to my family and colleagues for providing me with unfailing support and continuous encouragement throughout the course and the study of this thesis

ABSTRACT

The study applied Appraisal Theory developed by Martin and White (2005) as a framework for the investigation into the American and Vietnamese governments' response to the COVID-19 pandemic in news reports The data comprises 40 news reports (20 in each language) downloaded from the New York Times and the Tuoi Tre The study sought to investigate the similarities and differences between the two languages

regarding Attitudinal resources, namely Affect, Judgment, and Appreciation The findings showed that the deployment of the Attitudinal resources in the

English and Vietnamese data shared certain similarities, such as the occurrence of all types of Attitudinal values and the more common use of

Non-authorial and Explicit resources than Authorial and Implicit ones

However, despite the similarities between the two languages, a number of subtle differences were also observed With regard to the differences in

Positive and Negative Appreciation and In/Security Affect in the two languages, the writers indicated a radically dissimilar attitude to the pandemic

of the American and Vietnamese governments Hopefully, the study offers language learners and teachers useful knowledge of Appraisal and the

features of the evaluative language employed in English and Vietnamese news reports

TABLE OF CONTENTS

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LIST OF TABLES vi

LIST OF FIGURES vii

CONVENTIONS viii

Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION 1

1.2 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES 3

1.2.1 Aims 3

1.2.2 Objectives 3

1.3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS 3

1.4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY 3

1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY 4

1.6 ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY ……… 4

Chapter 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 6

2.1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 6

2.1.1 Appraisal Theory 6

2.1.2 Attitude 8

2.1.3 Engagement 16

2.1.4 Graduation 18

2.2 RELATED STUDIES 19

Chapter 3 RESEARCH METHODS AND PROCEDURES 23

3.1 RESEARCH METHODS 23

3.2 DATA COLLECTION 23

3.3 DATA ANALYSIS 24

3.4 RESEARCH PROCEDURES 24

3.5 RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY 24

3.6 SUMMARY 25

Chapter 4 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 26

4.1 GENERAL FEATURES OF ATTITUDE IN THE NEWS REPORTS 26 4.2 AFFECT 27

4.2.1 Dis/inclination 28

4.2.2 Dis/Satisfaction 30

4.2.3 In/Security 31

4.2.4 Un/Happiness 32

4.2.5 Authorial and Non-authorial Affect 33

4.3 JUDGEMENT 38

4.3.1 Subtypes of Judgement 38

4.3.2 Explicit and Implicit Judgement 44

4.3.3 Positive and Negative Judgement 47

4.4 APPRECIATION 50

4.4.1 Subtypes of Appreciation 50

4.4.2 Positive and Negative Appreciation 56

4.5 SUMMARY 60

Chapter 5 CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 61

5.1 CONCLUSIONS 61

5.2 IMPLICATIONS 64

5.3 LIMITATIONS 64

5.4 SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH 65

REFERENCES 66 APPENDIX

LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1 Grammatical realizations of Affect 10

Table 2.2 Subtypes of Affect 11

Table 2.3 The system of Judgment 13

Table 2.4 Categories of Appreciation 15

Table 2.5 Subtypes of Appreciation 16

Table 2.6 Monogloss and Heterogloss 17

Table 4.1 Frequency of Attitude resources in ENRs and VNRs 26

Table 4.2 Distribution of Affect resources in ENRs and VNRs 28

Table 4.3 Authorial and Non-authorial Affect resources in ENRs and VNRs 33

Table 4.4 Positive and Negative Affect resources in ENRs and VNRs 36

Table 4.5 Distribution of Judgement resources in ENRs and VNRs 39

Table 4.6 Explicit and Implicit Judgement resources in ENRs and VNRs 44

Table 4.7 Positive and Negative Judgement resources in ENRs and VNRs 47

Table 4.8 Attribution of Appreciation resources in ENRs and VNRs 50

Table 4.9 Positive and Negative Appreciation resources in ENRs and VNRs 56

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2.1 The language stratification and meta-functions 6

Figure 2.2 Appraisal System 8

Figure 2.3 Sub-systems of Attitude 9

Figure 4.1 Sub-types of Affect resources in ENRs and VNRs 28

Figure 4.2 Authorial and Non-authorial Affect resources in ENRs and VNRs 34

Figure 4.3 Positive and Negative Affect resources in ENRs and VNRs 36

Figure 4.4 Social Esteem and Social Sanction resources in ENRs and VNRs 38

Figure 4.5 Explicit and Implicit Judgement resources in ENRs and VNRs 45

Figure 4.6 Positive and Negative Judgement resources in ENRs and VNRs 48

Figure 4.7 Attribution of Appreciation resources in ENRs and VNRs 51

Figure 4.8 Positive and Negative Appreciation resources in ENRs and VNRs 57

CONVENTIONS

Italics are used for quotes, technical terms, emphasis, and examples

Bold is deployed to mark the first use of technical terms

In the numbered examples: Bold marks the use of what is being

demonstrated

ENR (1-20): English data numbered from 1 to 20

VNR (1-20): Vietnamese data numbered from 1 to 20

Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION

This chapter starts with the rationale, followed by the aim and objectives of the study, research questions, the significance of the study, and the scope of the study The organization of the study is presented as the last section of the research

1.1 RATIONALE

It is undeniable that the media in general and news reports in specific not only contributes to enriching human being's scientific general knowledge but also helps people to keep pace with temporary social issues According to

White (1998: 266), “News journalism ranges across the greatest diversity of discourses, including not only those of politics, the law, and the emergency services, but those of economics, bureaucracy, medicine, religion, the social and physical sciences, the humanities, and education” News reporting is

considered a powerful method to disseminate information by which an informed public discourse may be established and maintained

Recently, when the COVID-19 pandemic has hit almost all countries and territories worldwide, causing great disruption for all aspects of life, journalists are working round the clock to provide readers with comprehensive, up-to-date reporting on the COVID-19 global pandemic Their coverage primarily focused on ways that local authorities and people have responded to the pandemic, the impact of the virus on people's life, as well as the pandemic from the perspectives of specialists, researchers, and scientists

As the pandemic progressed in the U.S., Vietnam, and throughout the rest of the world, the two governments have implemented series of measures such as enforcing lockdowns and promoting social distancing norms aimed at

halting the spread of the virus since its initial outbreak Although sharing the same goal of bringing the rapidly spreading COVID-19 pandemic under control to safeguard people‟s lives and health, the American and Vietnamese governments‟ work in response to the COVID-19 seems dissimilar

From the perspective of Appraisal Theory, many scholars (Martin,

2000; Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004; Martin and Rose, 2007) have paid

much attention to evaluation Attitude, Engagement, and Graduation form

the Appraisal Framework in language Appraisal Theory is developed in the

framework of systemic functional linguistics with a view to describing and explaining how people evaluate others and things It has been widely applied

to help the listeners and readers understand the speaker‟s or writer's position,

outlook and attitude deeply Attitude, along with Engagement and Graduation, forms the Appraisal Framework in language It plays an integral role in the expression of interpersonal meanings of the language Attitude

consists of three sub-systems: Affect - expressions of feelings and emotions;

Judgement - evaluations of human behaviours; and Appreciation -

assessment of things and entities

Appraisal Theory has been applied in a wide variety of studies with

different genres, which proves its significance as a theoretical framework to help understand the evaluative language However, there has not been any study of attitudinal resources in English and Vietnamese news reports towards the American and Vietnamese governments' response to the COVID – 19 due

to its recent outbreak worldwide, which means there is a gap available for my thesis For the sources of inspiration mentioned above, I have been inspired to

choose the topic An Attitudinal study on the American and Vietnamese

governments‟ response to the COVID-19 pandemic in news reports as my

research paper

1.2 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

1.2.1 Aims

This study was carried out to investigate the similarities and differences between the American and Vietnamese governments' response to the pandemic in terms of Attitude

1.2.2 Objectives

The objectives of the study are:

1 To find out Attitudinal resources, namely Affect, Judgement and Appreciation employed in the news reports about American and

Vietnamese governments' response to the COVID-19 pandemic;

2 To examine the frequencies of occurrence of the

Attitudinal resources employed in the news;

3 To investigate the similarities and differences between the American and Vietnamese governments' response to the pandemic in terms of Attitude

1.3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The study aims at investigating the following questions:

1 What types of attitudinal resources are used in English and Vietnamese news reports about the American and Vietnamese governments' response to the pandemic?

2 What are the frequencies of the occurrence of Attitudinal resources in the news?

3 What are the similarities and differences between the American and Vietnamese governments' response to the pandemic in terms of Attitude?

1.4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

Though the Appraisal Theory is composed of three domains,

precisely Attitude, Engagement and Graduation, this study focuses on the

Attitudinal resources, namely Affect, Judgment, and Appreciation due to

their considerable significance in revealing attitudes meeting the aim of the

study In this study, I would like to investigate the Attitudinal resources in

forty news reports about the American and Vietnamese governments' response to the pandemic in the same period from February 2020 to September 2020 from reliable websites

1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

The findings of the study are expected to offer both theoretical and

practical contributions to the field of Attitudinal research Theoretically, the

findings of the study help fulfil some gaps of the research on Attitudinal

resources from the perspective of evaluative language and provide the information for further research in this field to be done Practically, the study

is considered to help learners and teachers of English know how to use

Attitudinal resources effectively in their teaching and learning, especially

writing skills

1.6 ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY

The study is organized into five chapters as follows:

Chapter 1, Introduction, presents the rationale, aims, and

objectives, research questions, the scope of the study, the significance of the study, and the organization of the study

Chapter 2, Literature Review, provides the theoretical background

on which the study is based and briefly presents a review of previous studies related to this study

Chapter 3, Research Methods and Procedures, deals with the

research methods, research procedures, data collection, data analysis

Chapter 4, Findings and Discussions, focuses on describing,

analyzing, comparing, and discussing attitude in news about American and Vietnamese government's response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic

Chapter 5, Conclusion, gives a summary of the results of the study

It also offers limitations of the study and suggestions for further research

Chapter 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter is concerned with the theoretical background of the study

as well as the literature review on the prior research related to the study

2.1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

2.1.1 Appraisal Theory

The Appraisal System was first developed by James Martin (1996,

2000) and Peter White (1997), and then further developed by Martin and White (2005) under the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics Advocates of SFL assume that there are three metafunctions of language,

namely ideational, interpersonal and textual Appraisal belongs to the

interpersonal metafunction, the function that indicates relationships among people, which is generalized in 2.1

Figure 2.1 The language stratification and meta-functions (Martin & White, 2005)

The theory considered to be a significant development within the paradigm of Systemic Functional Linguistics focuses on how writers and speakers express their feelings, how they amplify them, and how they may incorporate additional voices in their discourses (Martin & White, 2005)

According to Martin & White (2005:22), "Appraisal is concerned with evaluation: the kinds of attitudes that are negotiated in a text, the strength of the feelings involved and the ways in which values are sourced and readers aligned" It can be inferred from the given overview of Appraisal

Resources taken from Martin and White (2005) above that evaluative

language consists of three primary types, Engagement, Attitude, and

Graduation, respectively Engagement is the category that refers to the

resources for introducing voices into a discourse analysis through projection, modalization or concession This broad term is later divided into two smaller

branches, concerning whether the key choice for Engagement has to do with voice or more than one voice Graduation is the scaling of interpersonal

force or for sharpening/blurring the focus of value relationships It is made up of force and focus: the former emphasizes the choice to raise or lower the intensity of gradable items while the latter involves the decision of sharpening or softening an experiential boundary

This study adopts the remaining category, Attitude, as the theoretical framework Attitude can be divided into three domains of feelings, namely

Affect, Judgement and Appreciation, while Engagement has two subsystems: Monoglossic and Heteroglossic; and Graduation also contains two areas: Force

and Focus The outline of the Appraisal System is presented in Figure 2.2 as

follows:

Figure 2.2 Appraisal System (Martin & White, 2005: 38)

2.1.2 Attitude

White (2015a, p.2) claims that Attitude refers to the sub-system of

evaluative meaning by which addressees are positioned to adopt a positive or negative view vis-à-vis experiential phenomena or propositions about those

phenomena Attitude covers feelings that are either explicitly stated or

implicitly stated The explicit feelings or inscribed attitude are the feelings that are clear enough to be seen without employing interpretation, while the implicit feelings or the invoked attitude are the ones that are the results of the interpretation of what is actually said Moreover, each of the three subtypes of

Attitude is grouped into two regions: the positive Attitude and the negative Attitude Under the Appraisal coding practice, positive and negative values

are typically indicated by “+” and “-” respectively

Attitudinal meanings are divided into the following three broad

subtypes: Affect, Judgement and Appreciation, as presented in Figure 2.3

Figure 2.3 Sub-systems of Attitude (Martin & White, 2005: 42-58)

In detail, Affect covers emotions concerned with Dis/inclination,

Un/happiness, In/security and Dis/satisfaction Judgement consists of two

broad categories, namely Social esteem and Social sanction Appreciation is

divided into three subtypes: Reaction, Composition, and Valuation

2.1.2.1 Affect

Affect is the emotional response to the person, thing, happening, or state

of affairs According to Martin & White (2005), Affect can be realized by

quality, mental and behavioral processes, modal adjuncts, and nominalizations These realizations can be viewed in Table 2.1

Table 2.1 Grammatical realizations of Affect

(Martin & White, 2005: 46)

a sad captain the captain was sad the captain left sadly affect as ‘process’

- desiderative

Modal Adjunct sadly, he had to go

affect as ‘nominalizations’ Subject, Object joy, sadness, sorrow

Affect is also divided into four subtypes: Dis/inclination,

Un/happiness, In/security and Dis/satisfaction

Dis/inclination is concerned with how the speaker is inclined or disinclined to something Some lexical items related to the type are miss, long for, yearn for, etc

Un/happiness deals with the emotional feeling of the speaker, whether

he is happy or sad The specific words in this region are cheerful, gloomy, buoyant, adore, hate, etc

In/security covers the speaker's emotions which are related to his

ecosocial well-being such as anxiety, fear, confidence, and trust as presented

in Table 2.2

Dis/satisfaction deals with the feelings of achievement and frustration

in relation to the activities in which we are engaged It covers the speaker‟s emotions concerned with ennui, displeasure, interest, and pleasure as

presented in Table 2.2

The subtypes of Affect system are presented in Table 2.2

Martin and White (2005: 46-52) also state that Affect is classified into

Authorial Affect and Non-authorial Affect Authorial Affect involves the

author‟s feelings and indicates how they have responded emotionally to the

evaluated person, thing or situation Whereas, Non-Authorial Affect, White

(2015b) states that it is the case where it is not the author‟s emotions which are described but those of other human individuals or groups

Table 2.2 Subtypes of Affect (Martin & White, 2005: 49-51)

Unhappiness

 misery

 antipathy

- whimper/ cry

- rubbish/ abuse/ revile

- down/ sad/ miserable

- dislike/ hate/ abhor

Happiness

 cheer

 affection

- chuckle/ laugh/ rejoice

- shake hands/ hug/ embrace

- cheerful/ buoyant/ jubilant

- be fond of/ love/ adore

Insecurity

 disquiet

 surprise

- restless/twitching /shaking

- start /cry out /faint

- uneasy/ anxious/ freaked out

- startled/ jolted/ staggered

- fidget/ yawn/ tune out

- caution/ scold/ castigate

- flat/ staled/ jaded

- cross/ bored with angry/

UN/HAPPINESS Bebaviour Composition

sick of/ furious/ fed up with

Fear tremble/ shudder/ cower wary/ fearful/ terrorised

Desire suggest/request/ demand miss/ long for/ yearn for

2.1.2.2 Judgement

The second category of Attitude is Judgement This Appraisal category

deals with the speaker/writer‟s ethical attitude towards human behavior, such

as admire, criticize, praise, condemn, etc In Judgement system, adverbs

usually act as the circumstance of manner, adjectives as epithet or attribute, and some nouns and verbs containing attitudinal meaning also

express the meaning of Judgement Judgement is divided into two broad

categories and five narrow subtypes within these two categories (Martin

& White, 2005) Two broad categories are Social esteem and Social

sanction by reference to social norms or rules

Social esteem is the region of judgements in which the evaluation of

people‟s conduct is based on social ethics and a standard of appropriateness

In this region, there are three kinds of judgements: Normality, Capacity and

Tenacity

Normality is concerned with how unusual someone is The familiar

words classified in this domain are normal, natural, familiar, lucky, etc

Capacity is related to how capable someone is The typical words

classified in this domain are powerful, vigorous, healthy, fit, etc

Tenacity covers how resolute someone is The specific words

classified in this domain are plucky, reliable, tireless, loyal, etc

Social sanction is the region of judgements in which the evaluation of

people's conduct is based on legal/religious rules Unlike those underlying

Social esteem, the rules on which Social sanction is based are usually

codified and written The rules may be legal or moral, so judgments of

Social sanction turn on questions of legality and morality This region

comprises judgements of two traits involving Veracity and Propriety

Veracity covers how truthful someone is The typical words classified

in this region are truthful, candid, tactful,…

Propriety is concerned with how ethical someone is The typical words

classified in this region are polite, ethical, law abiding,…

Illustrative realizations for Social esteem and Social sanction are

presented in Table 2.3 below

Table 2.3 The system of Judgment

(Source: Martin and White, 2005)

Normality

“How special?”

lucky, fortunate, …;

normal, natural, familiar …;

cool, stable, predictable …;

in, fashionable, avant …;

celebrated, unsung …

unlucky, hapless, star-crossed …;

odd, peculiar, eccentric …;

witty, humorous, droll …;

insightful, clever, gifted …;

mild, weak, whimpy …;

unsound, sick, crippled …;

immature, childish, …;

dull, dreary, grave …;

slow, stupid, thick …;

Social Esteem Positive (admire) Negative (criticize)

balanced, together, sane …;

sensible, expert, shrewd …;

literate, educated,…;

successful, productive …

flaky, neurotic, insane …;

naive, inexpert, foolish …;

plucky, brave, heroic …;

cautious, wary, patient …;

Veracity [truth]

“How honest?”

truthful, honest, credible …;

frank, candid, direct …;

good, moral, ethical …;

law abiding, fair, just …;

sensitive, kind, caring …;

unassuming, modest, …;

polite, reverent …;

altruistic, charitable …

bad, immoral, evil …;

corrupt, unfair, unjust …;

insensitive, mean, cruel …;

vain, snobby, arrogant …;

rude, irreverent …;

selfish, greedy, avaricious …

2.1.2.3 Appreciation

Appreciation has a positive and negative dimension, and it is divided

into three variables: Reaction, Composition, and Valuation Reaction is

related to affection It is further sub-divided into two systems: impact (whether the phenomena grab our attention and quality (whether the speaker

likes the phenomena) Composition is related to our view of order It is further

sub-divided into two systems: balance (whether the phenomena are orderly, have a sense of balance and connectedness in them) and complexity (whether

the phenomena are easy or difficult to comprehend) Valuation is related to

our considered opinions (whether the phenomena are worthwhile)

Appreciation can be illustrated by lexical items mentioned in Table 2.4

Table 2.4 Categories of Appreciation

unremarkable, pedestrian …

REACTION

quality

„Did I like it?‟

okay, fine, good … lovely, beautiful, splendid …;

appealing, welcome …

bad, yuk, nasty …;

plain, ugly, grotesque …; repulsive, revolting, …

shapeless, amorphous, …

COMPOSITION

Complexity

„Was it hard to follow?‟

simple, pure, elegant …;

lucid, clear, precise …;

intricate, rich, detailed, …

dime-a-dozen, common; fake, bogus, glitzy …;

ineffective, useless, …

However, from the metafunctional perspective, Reaction of the Appreciation framework is related to interpersonal significance, Composition

to the textual organization and Valuation to ideational value (Martin & White,

2005: 57) Table 2.5 summarizes this relation:

Table 2.5 Subtypes of Appreciation (Martin & White, 2005:57)

Reaction Affection Interpersonal

Composition Perception Textual

Valuation Cognition Ideational

In short, Attitude is the major subsystem in Appraisal framework The Appraisal literature divides Attitudinal meanings into the following three broad subtypes: Affect, Judgement and Appreciation Affect system is the

psychological reaction to the behaviour, the text or process, and the

phenomenon Judgement is the Attitudinal evaluation of human behaviour by reference to social norms or rules Appreciation is the subsystem of resources for aesthetic evaluation In this study, the subsystems of Atttitude were

deployed as the framework to analyse the Attitudinal resources employed in the news reports on the American and Vietnamese governments‟ response to

the Covid-19 Another domain of Appraisal system is Engagement, which is

discussed in the following section

2.1.3 Engagement

According to Martin and White (2005:35), the system of Engagement

“deals with sourcing attitudes and the play of voices around opinions in discourse” and is “directed towards identifying the particular dialogistic positioning associated with given meanings and towards describing what is at stake when one meaning rather than another is employed” Martin and White (2005:97) also mention that this system involves “those meanings which in various ways construe for the text a heteroglossic backdrop of prior utterances, alternative viewpoints and anticipated responses” Engagement is

sub-divided into two types: Monogloss and Heterogloss Monogloss deals

with the “bare- assertion” in which there is no reference to another voice, while Heterogloss deals with reference to another voice Heterogloss is

further divided in the following subgroups:

Contrast includes Disclaim and Proclaim Disclaim consists of denial

(nothing, never, no, etc.) and counter (although, however, but, strangely, etc.)

The category Proclaim refers to formulations which can be interpreted as heading or challenge from potential dialogic respondents Proclaim includes

three types: concurrence, pronouncement, and endorsement

In terms of Expand, the speaker presents the current proposition, which is one view among a possible range of views It consists of Entertain (internal voice of speaker) and Attribute (external sources) The resources of

Entertain are often realized by Modality and Evidentiality or via mental

processes Attribute is concerned with the viewpoints of others in relevant

issues through direct quotations or textual assimilations

Table 2.6 Monogloss and Heterogloss (Martin and White, 2005: 100)

Monoglossic (no recognition of

dialogistic alternatives)

Heteroglossic (recognition of dialogistic

alternatives)

The banks have been greedy There is the argument though that the banks

have been greedy

In my view the banks have been greedy

Callers to talkback radio see the banks as being greedy

The chairman of the consumers association has stated that the banks are being greedy

There can be no denying the banks have been greedy

Everyone knows the banks are greedy

The banks haven‟t been greedy

In summary, Engagement identifies the sources of evaluation shown in Monogloss and Heterogloss Monogloss concerns with factual information from the authors, and Heterogloss deals with evaluation from other sources The last semantic area of the Appraisal theory, Graduation, will be discussed

in the next part

2.1.4 Graduation

The last part of the Appraisal framework is named Graduation, which

is defined as "grading phenomena whereby feelings are amplified and categories blurred" (Martin and White, 2005: 35) Graduation is essential in

the process of construing meaning in that almost every attitudinal meaning is characterized by its gradability upon with the account of up-scaling and

down-scaling developed by Martin and White Graduation is made up of

Force and Focus

Force refers to assessments with the degree of intensity or amount

which can operate over qualities, processes, or verbal modality of likelihood,

usuality, inclination, and obligation The two sub-systems of Force are

Quantification and Intensification

Focus refers to resources that indicate to what extent the evaluated item

resembles the prototypicality or is close to the trueness or preciseness of the category boundaries drawn (Martin and White, 2005) Martin and White

(2005) state Sharpen and Soften are two types in Focus Sharpen shows

“upscale” prototypicality Soften indicates the downscaling type indicating

only marginal membership in the category

In summary, the Appraisal system includes three main domains: Attitude, Engagement and Graduation Attitude is concerned with our feelings,

including emotional reactions, judgements of behaviour and evaluation of

things Engagement deals with language that explores the sources of opinions

Graduation is concerned with language that reveals the degree of evaluation Attitude system consists of three main types, namely Affect, Judgement and Appreciation Affect is concerned with resources for construing emotional reactions Judgement deals with resources for evaluating human behavior ethically Appreciation includes resources for construing the value of things Among the three types of Appraisal system, Attitude was used as the

theoretical framework of the study As a result, subtypes of Attitude work as a framework to uncover evaluative language in English and Vietnamese news reports about the American and Vietnamese governments‟ response to the COVID-19 pandemic

2.2 RELATED STUDIES

Since its introduction as an invaluable guideline for emotion

investigation, the Appraisal Theory has attracted increasing interest in

numerous fields Hence, a number of research papers have been conducted using this framework

Soo‐Guan Khoo, Nourbakhsh and Na (2012) adopted the Appraisal theory to investigate a collection of political news about George W Bush and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad‟s economic policies to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of this theory The conclusion was that the framework was useful in revealing various aspects of sentiment that should be useful to researchers such as the appraisers and object of appraisal, bias of the appraisers and the author, type of attitude and manner of expressing the sentiment However, there were also problems in identifying appraisal phrases and attitude categories because of the subtlety of expression in political news articles, lack of treatment of tense and time frame, lack of a typology of emotions, and need to identify different types of behaviors that reflect sentiment

Another study related to Attitudinal analysis was conducted by Namon

Jirasataporn in 2018 With the study “Attitudinal Analysis of Appraisal System in American and Chinese Business Articles from TIME Magazine”, the writer employed White's (1998) and Martin and Rose's (2007) Appraisal System as the analytical tool to reveal how the language was used to serve the

ideology which was embedded in business articles related to America and China By comparing the articles written about the two countries and drawn from a mainstream weekly news magazine, the result of this study found out

that more attitudes occur in the category of Appreciation rather than Affect and Judgement for both American and Chinese business articles Even more

interestingly, it also uncovered the media's narratively different representations of American and Chinese business images, and it also substantiated the fact that news report is never bias-free

In Vietnam, Appraisal Theory has been applied to analyses of texts not

only in written mode but spoken mode as well In terms of written discourses,

the Appraisal Theory has been adopted in the studies of comparative analysis

of English and Vietnamese languages Vo Duy Duc (2011) conducted doctoral research on style, structure, and ideology in English and Vietnamese business hard news reporting The study compared English and Vietnamese business hard news reporting with respect to journalistic voices with an analysis of 50 texts It dealt with investigating whether the business hard news reporting of the two languages shared the same system of voices or not The findings of the study showed that the English and Vietnamese business texts generally experienced a similar structure and that these news stories basically operated with the same reporter voice However, the two languages reflected considerable differences in the representation of the key social groups in terms of the ideologies embedded in the two languages Do Huynh My Lien

(2015) made a comparison between Attitude resources in showbiz news in

English and Vietnamese The finding of the study indicated that the authors of

Vietnamese showbiz news use much more Attitudinal values than the authors

of English showbiz news Nguyen Thi Thu Hien (2016) conducted a research

to investigate the social attitudes in news reports towards President Obama‟s

visit to Vietnam The findings pointed out that Appraisal Theory could be

applied as an useful tool for Vietnamese language discourse analysis to reveal numerous aspects of sentiment The results showed that the appraisers of the news tend to express their own emotions and evaluate Obama‟s visit- related entities or events much more than judge the involved people and their behavior

In addition, the appraisers of the news have a tendency of choosing a safe stance either by separating themselves from the arguments expressing opinions with more Expansions than Contractions or by attributing the judgmental elements to the external sources Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan (2019) investigated the use of evaluative language in two articles concerning the destruction of the Earth‟s largest rainforest, the Amazon, in 2019 The analysis of the two texts

under the Appraisal Theory by Martin and White (2005) has revealed noticeable evaluative language factors in terms of Attitude The most

significant feature is the pre-eminence of negativity in both articles when describing the severity of the fire and the slow reactions and solutions to the problems of the local authority Another language element that is worth considering is the use of quantification in the implied expression of attitude to emphasize the serious destruction of the Amazon Tong My Linh (2020) made

a contrastive study of Attitudinal resources in English and Vietnamese news reports on plastic straws to identify the Attitudinal resources in English and

Vietnamese news reports on plastic straws and their occurrence to reveal the choice of language of evaluation in the reports The research outcomes show

that the deployment of the Attitudinal resources in the English and Vietnamese

corpora shared certain similarities, such as the occurrence of all types of

Attitudinal values and the more common employment of positive and explicit

resources than negative and implicit ones

The success in applying appraisal theory in a number of research papers has proved its applicability when dealing with the way language is used to evaluate, adopt stances, construct textual personas and manage interpersonal positioning and relationships However, no researchers have applied the

Appraisal Theory in the analysis of Attitude resources in news reports about the

American and Vietnamese governments‟ response to the COVID-19 pandemic Therefore, it is expected that the paper is an effort to bridge this gap

To sum up, in this chapter, we have discussed theoretical preliminaries that are fundamental to the purpose of the study, and reviewed prior research related to the study The following chapter deals with the methods and procedures to obtain the data and how the data analysis was conducted

Chapter 3 RESEARCH METHODS AND PROCEDURES

This chapter aims at dealing with the methods and procedures of the study It consists of the methods used in the study that support each other in investigating the data and finding the results Besides, how the data were collected and analyzed is also presented in this chapter The reliability and validity of the research are discussed at the end of the chapter

3.1 RESEARCH METHODS

The qualitative approach was employed to identify and classify the

Attitudinal resources and help the researcher to analyze and examine the percentage of Attitudinal resources in the data performed

To achieve the aims of the study, several methods such as descriptive, analytic, comparative, and synthetic were used as the main supporting methods to analyze the data

3.2 DATA COLLECTION

Forty news of the American and Vietnamese government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic in English and Vietnamese; twenty from each language were observed and examined The total length of all Vietnamese news reports is 13.779 words and 16.573 words in English news reports The news reports were collected from two newspapers with high prestige and wide circulation rates - the New York Times and the Tuoi Tre The news selected was issued in the same period from February 2020 to September 2020 The length of the English and Vietnamese news reports fluctuated from 698 words to 1074 words

The twenty English news reports were coded from ENR1 to ENR20 and the twenty Vietnamese news reports were marked from VNR1 to VNR20 according to the date of publication

3.3 DATA ANALYSIS

With forty news reports written in English and Vietnamese, and the

theoretical background of Appraisal Theory by Martin and White (2005), the study identified Attitudinal resources and determined the frequency of

occurrence of the resources in the English and Vietnamese news reports The

occurrence frequency of Attitudinal resources was then statistically presented

so that we could make a comparison and contrast to find out the similarities and differences between the two governments‟ response to the COVID-19

pandemic in terms of three subtypes of Attitude

3.4 RESEARCH PROCEDURES

The Attitudinal study on the American and Vietnamese governments‟ response to the COVID-19 pandemic in news reports was carried out as follows:

+ First, the topic for the investigation was chosen by a thorough review

of the previous studies;

+ Second, the English and Vietnamese news was collected from two official online newspaper websites;

+ Next, the Attitudinal resources used in the news reports were

identified;

+ Then, the ways the writers used the Attitudinal resources to convey

the American and Vietnamese governments‟ attitude to the COVID-19 pandemic were compared and discussed;

+ Finally, the limitations of the study and suggestions for further research were listed

3.5 RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY

Reliability and validity are the two criteria used to guarantee the quality

of data In terms of reliability, the data for this study were collected from the

two prestigious websites on the Internet as mentioned in the References Therefore, the quality of the data is quite reliable In terms of validity, the

study was based on the Appraisal Theory developed by Martin and White

(2005), which has been applied in various types of discourse

For the factors mentioned above, it can be said that the reliability of the data and validity of the study‟s findings could be guaranteed

3.6 SUMMARY

In summary, this chapter covers major methods as well as necessary steps that provide a solid foundation for the collection and analysis of the data for the study The findings of the study are revealed in Chapter 4 with discussions

Chapter 4 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

This chapter describes the analysis of data followed by a discussion of the

research findings The first section presents the overall usage of Attitudinal

resources in the forty news reports In the second section, each subtype of

Attitudinal resources will be analyzed and compared to find out the

similarities and differences between the two corpora This chapter ends with a brief conclusion of the findings of data analysis, and model analysis of each

language will also be shown to illustrate how Attitude is expressed in the

news reports about the two governments' response to the COVID-19

4.1 GENERAL FEATURES OF ATTITUDE IN THE NEWS REPORTS

The table below displays the total number of Attitude resources found

in the whole of the data examined

Table 4.1 Frequency of Attitude resources in ENRs and VNRs

It can be seen from Table 4.1 that the occurrence of Attitudinal

resources in the forty news reports shows a similar overall tendency; that is;

among the three sub-systems, Appreciation is uncovered to be most widely used in this genre of the two languages More specifically, Appreciation

resources in ENRs and VNRs make up a higher proportion than the others,

with about 43.09% and 41.32%, respectively, which shows that Appreciation

resources are strongly favored to make the text more appreciative than emotional and judgemental

The distribution of Attitudinal resources in the news reports and their

functions will be shown in the following sections on the individual categories

of Attitude

4.2 AFFECT

Affect deals with resources for constructing emotional reactions In other words, the Affect system characterizes phenomena by reference to emotions In the domain of Affect, different categories can be divided, namely into Un/happiness, Dis/inclination, In/security, and Dis/satisfaction Un/happiness refers to our feelings of sadness, hate, happiness, and love Dis/inclination is related to fear and desire In/security refers to our feelings

of peace and anxiety in relation to our environs Dis/satisfaction covers our

feelings of achievement and frustration The following chart displays the

distribution of the 83 Affect items found in English news reports and the

distribution of the 88 ones in Vietnamese news reports From Table 4.2 and

Figure 4.1, it can be seen that all types of Affect resources are employed in the

news However, the frequency of occurrence of each type is distributed differently in the two corpora The highest frequency goes to the type of

Dis/inclination in English data with 48 instances, making up nearly 57.83% The findings also show that Dis/satisfaction is the second most popular type

of Affect with an occurrence frequency of about 20.48% It is followed by In/security, which has an occurrence frequency of just over 18.07% Un/happiness is not a frequently used type of Affect, making up only 3.62%

In the Vietnamese news reports, Dis/Inclination is also the Affect item with

the highest percentage, with nearly 69.33% of occurrence It is followed by

In/Security, with a frequency of occurrence of about 19.31% The following items, in the same order, are Dis/satisfaction and Un/Happiness, with the

frequency of occurrence of approximately 5.68%

Table 4.2 Distribution of Affect resources in ENRs and VNRs

Instances Percentages Instances Percentages Dis/Inclination 48 57.83% 61 69.33% Dis/Satisfaction 17 20.48% 5 5.68% In/Security 15 18.07% 17 19.31%

The statistics above are graphically illustrated in Figure 4.1

Figure 4.1 Sub-types of Affect resources in ENRs and VNRs

4.2.1 Dis/inclination

The first most widely used type of Affect items used in both corpora of news reports is Dis/Inclination, and most of the items employed here are used

to express both desire and hope of the two governments

In the English news reports, the words suggest and hope are the most

frequently used to express the American government plans and hope for success in fighting against the COVID -19

[4.1] President Donald Trump on Thursday suggested exploring

disinfectants as a possible treatment for coronavirus infections [ENR3]

[4.2] Trump suggests using the next coronavirus aid package to push

some states and local governments to make 'sanctuary city adjustments' [ENR20]

[4.3] Administration officials are planning to intensify what they hope

is a sharper, and less conflicting, message of the pandemic next week

[ ENR2]

In the news reports on the Vietnamese government‟s response to the

COVID-19, a variety of Affectual wording such as yêu cầu, đề xuất and đề nghị appear with high percentage Those are mainly used to mention the

government‟s strong wish to combat the spread of the coronavirus

[4.4] Phiên họp vừa bắt đầu lúc 14h30 chiều nay 4-2, Thủ tướng yêu cầu tìm mọi biện pháp ngăn chặn dịch lây lan ở Việt Nam. [ VNR1]

[4.5] Người đứng đầu Chính phủ cũng cho biết đã yêu cầu lãnh đạo Bộ

Y tế tập trung cứu chữa cho bệnh nhân COVID-19, không để có người tử vong [ VNR2]

[4.6] Thủ tướng đề nghị ban chỉ đạo quốc gia xem xét cụ thể các mức tăng chi cho người cách ly; đề xuất mức hỗ trợ cho bác sĩ, y tế, nhân viên y tế

và các cá nhân liên quan phục vụ công tác cách ly với tinh thần "không để anh em quá vất vả mà chi phí quá thấp" [ VNR4]

In terms of Affect resources, Inclination is dominant in both languages

This tendency illustrates the two governments‟ hope and efforts to overcome the situation

The next section will deal with another subtype of Affect- Dis/Satisfaction

4.2.2 Dis/Satisfaction

The next type of Affect resources employed in both English and Vietnamese data is Dis/Satisfaction with different percentages

In the examples below, negative Affect resources of Dis/Satisfaction

such as frustration, criticise, criticism are used in the English news reports to

express the lack of satisfaction among members of the American administration with the ways used to cope with the situation

[4.7] Dr Fauci has become more outspoken in his frustration with the

president as the number of his media appearances has been constrained

[ ENR1]

[4.8] Joe Biden, the apparent Democratic presidential nominee,

criticized Trump for the suggestions on Twitter "Here's an idea, Mr President: more tests Now And protective equipment for actual medical professionals," he said [ ENR3]

[4.9] And while the administration is implementing a coordinated

messaging campaign aimed at criticizing China for a coronavirus "coverup"

Trump's comments Sunday during a task force briefing indicate that he may

still be trying to walk a careful line in his criticism of Beijing. [ ENR5]

On the other hand, as we can see in the Vietnamese news reports, there

is a tendency of using positive Affect resources of Dis/Satisfaction to show the

government's gratitude and encouragement to individuals and organizations that have made their contributions to the fight against the pandemic Take the following cases as examples

[4.10] Thủ tướng cũng đề nghị tạo điều kiện cho người Việt Nam, nhất là các nhóm yếu thế như trẻ em vị thành niên, người đi chữa bệnh nặng bị kẹt ở

nước ngoài về nước; đồng thời biểu dương các địa phương bước đầu hỗ trợ

người nghèo trên địa bàn [ VNR9]