Psychological progression of the refugees in the chapter “i’d love you to want me” in the novel ‘the refugees’ by viet thanh nguyen an appraisal analysis

Psychological progression of the refugees in the chapter “i’d love you to want me” in the novel ‘the refugees’ by viet thanh nguyen an appraisal analysis

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION FACULTY OF LINGUISTICS & CULTURES OF ENGLISH-SPEAKING COUNTRIES

GRADUATION PAPER

PSYCHOLOGICAL PROGRESSION OF THE REFUGEES IN THE CHAPTER “I‟D LOVE YOU TO WANT ME” IN THE NOVEL „THE REFUGEES‟ BY VIET THANH NGUYEN: AN APPRAISAL ANALYSIS

SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENT

FOR THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF ARTS (ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION)

Supervisor: Nguyễn Thị Minh Tâm (Ph.D) Student: Nguyễn Hà Trang

Course: QH2018.F1.E20.NNCLC

Hanoi - 2022

ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ NỘI

TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ

KHOA SƯ PHẠM TIẾNG ANH KHOA NGÔN NGỮ VÀ VĂN HÓA CÁC NƯỚC NÓI TIẾNG ANH

KHÓA LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP

DIỄN BIẾN TÂM LÝ CỦA NGƯỜI TỊ NẠN TRONG CHƯƠNG

“I‟D LOVE YOU TO WANT ME”, TIỂU THUYẾT “NGƯỜI TỊ

NẠN” CỦA NGUYỄN VIỆT THANH:

NGHIÊN CỨU THEO THUYẾT ĐÁNH GIÁ

Giáo viên hướng dẫn: Nguyễn Thị Minh Tâm (Ph.D) Sinh viên: Nguyễn Hà Trang

Khóa: QH2018.F1.E20.NNCLC

HÀ NỘI - 2022

DECLARATION

I hereby state that I, Nguyễn Hà Trang – class QH2018.F1.E20.NNCLC, being

a candidate for the degree of Bachelor of Arts (English Language Teacher Education - Honors) accept the requirements of the College relating to the retention and use of Bachelor‟s Graduation Paper deposited in the library

In terms of these conditions, I agree that the origin of my paper deposited in the library should be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the librarian for the care, loan or reproduction of the paper

Nguyễn Hà Trang

04/05/2022

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to extend my gratitude towards all the personages who have heartened me in various ways in this endeavor Without such guidance, support, and encouragement, I could not have arrived at this accomplishment today

This journey could not have been initiated without endless support and great encouragement from my beloved supervisor, Dr Nguyen Thi Minh Tam She taught

me in the “Functional Grammar” course, which is the inspiration for me to explore more in the SFL field She has always been the greatest supervisor that one can ask for Her timely enlightenment, valuable comments, suggestions have helped me along the journey of accomplishing this task I genuinely appreciate and am able to learn numerous lessons from her dedication, professionalism, intellectuality and lovely personality

I also owe a debt of gratitude to my family and my friends, especially YNaMic and Trang Leo, whose unfailing encouragement has accompanied me through this journey, making it much more enjoyable

The last thanks and appreciation go to ULIS, my university Without ULIS, I would not have had all the best opportunities to grow and explore myself and met the world‟s most dedicated lecturers and friends

ABSTRACT

This study investigates Affectual resources in Viet Thanh Nguyen's novel "The refugees", particularly the chapter "I'd love you to want me" in order to disclose the psychological progression of each character in the light of Appraisal Theory developed by Martin and White According to Martin and White (2005), the language of evaluation contributes to the construal of interpersonal meaning of the texts through the three systems of Engagement, Attitude, and Graduation The study registered the occurrence of Attitudinal values, specifically the Affect sub-system, which is defined as un/happiness, in/security, dis/satisfaction and dis/inclination The analytical framework of this study was an adaptation

of Martin and White (2005) and White (2015) order to investigate Affect according to four factors including Affectual subtypes, polarity, strategies and authorial or non-authorial dichotomies The analysis results of 216 Affectual instances that were collected in the chosen chapter showed that in this chapter, the author tends to employ negative language in expressing Affectual instances and different distribution of strategies for different characters

In addition, the feeling of "dissatisfaction" and "insecurity" accounted for the majority, followed by the feeling of "unhappiness" and "security" The author‟s preference to use observed Affectual values rather than authorial ones was also observed, which means he tends

to observe and capture the characters‟ feelings and express them from a third-person perspective The conclusions about each character's psychological progression as refugees far away from their homeland were then drawn out

TABLE OF CONTENT

1.2 Systemic Functional Linguistics and Appraisal Theory 3

1.1 Distribution of four Affect types 27

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

Figure 3 Analytical framework 25 Figure 4 Distribution of four Affect types in the Chapter 27 Figure 5 Distribution of positive/negative polarity of Affect in the

Chapter

31

Figure 6 Distribution of negative Affects in the Chapter 32 Figure 7 Distribution of positive Affects in the Chapter 32 Figure 8 Distribution of „mental process/state‟ and „behavioral surge‟

emotions in the Chapter

33

Figure 9 The distribution of „undirected mood‟ and „reaction to

others‟ emotions in the Chapter

Martin and White (2005), Ngo and Unsworth (2015)

Distribution of „mental process/state‟ and „behavioral surge‟

emotions in the Chapter

33

Table 7 Distribution of „undirected mood‟ and „reaction to others‟

emotions in the Chapter

34

Table 8 Distribution of „authorial‟ and „non-authorial‟ emotions in

the Chapter

36

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

1.1 Why Vietnamese refugees to the US?

Vietnamese Americans have a long-standing history of resettlement and development The first immigration wave in the early 1970s recorded fewer than 15,000 Vietnamese escaping Vietnam to the U.S Reported by the U.S Immigration and Naturalization Services (U.S INS), this country received only 4,561 Vietnam-born persons between 1961 and 1970; most of whom were students on exchange programs, trainees, or diplomats on nonimmigrant visas, together with a small number of U.S servicemen's wives Meanwhile, there were hardly any children (Skinner, 1980; Zhou & Bankston, 1998) Since 1975, Vietnamese Americans became part of one of America's most prominent refugee communities and, hence, increasingly noticeable in the American ethnic mosaic By 1990, the group totaled over 615,000, a 40-fold expansion in just 15 years Even this figure understates the actual size of the Vietnamese-born population since it omits no fewer than 200,000 Sino-Vietnamese (with Chinese ethnicity) who left Vietnam and landed in the United States as part of an enormous Southeast Asian refugee flow (Rumbaut, 1995) This refugee community is now on the verge

of becoming the third-largest Asian American community, only behind the Chinese and Filipinos, reaching more than 2 million in 2019 (PewResearch Center, 2021) They have made outstanding contributions to U.S development in various aspects, namely socio-economics, education, culture

To achieve their success as the present, Vietnamese Americans have been through initial challenges, including post-war psychological trauma, language barriers, culture shock, family issues-particularly generation gaps among family members, proper employment for initial refugees, political activism, to name a few Thus, research into this topic will provide a

more comprehensive look into such a dynamic and expansive ethnic community in the U.S

Interested in Vietnamese refugees to the U.S and literature, I am captivated by the book "The refugees" by Viet Thanh Nguyen - a Vietnamese American author "The refugees", published in early 2017, is the first short story by Viet Thanh Nguyen, consisting of eight

short stories written about refugees in Vietnam, including Nguyen and his family For different reasons, they have to leave Vietnam and live in another country The writer expressed that he and other refugees shared a sense of alienation from the community They always try to blend in with the new community while hiding their inferiority complex "The Refugees" is compared by Publishers Weekly to a pressurized pressure cooker full of anxiety, gurgling the perplexities of memory and identity of the Vietnamese refugees whose life has been interrupted due to war, forced to cross the ocean, and live in exile

The New York Times assessed that the book uses a subtle, detailed tone and straightforward narrative style, suitable for depicting the fate of refugees The Chicago Tribune commented that Refugees is an excellent collection of short stories, reflecting Nguyen's perspective on the issue of Vietnamese migration to the U.S and its impacts The Financial Times called the work a "sad but powerful" anthology The Dallas Morning News commented: "At a time when the obsession with refugees and migrants is on the rise in the United States and around the world, Viet Thanh's first collection of short stories contributes a much-needed humane voice to the group."

Highly appreciated by the international and domestic newspapers, "The refugees" has undoubtedly offered a more insightful comprehensive look into Vietnamese refugees with numerous untold stories In the book, the chapter “I‟d love you to want me” has been chosen for investigation in this thesis The selection is based on the researcher‟s personal preference The researcher‟s family is Vietnamese Americans who moved to the U.S after the fall of Saigon When starting their life in a new country, they encountered numerous difficulties However, even since they had their life there, the underlying struggles are still there They include the miss for the fatherland, the generation gap in families, to name a few Those challenges are all mentioned in the book, yet the second to last chapter “I‟d love you to want me” is the most relatable to the author, in which the miscommunication among generations and the innermost feelings of Vietnamese Americans are depicted vividly Hence, the researcher studies this chapter in the hope for a better understanding of those who live distantly away from their homeland

1.2 Systemic Functional Linguistics and Appraisal Theory

In this thesis project, I will investigate the emotional development of the characters, who are Vietnamese refugees to the U.S., in their attempt to blend in with a new community and overcome post-war difficulties and life challenges that the new country set for them I hypothesize that this will help create a more comprehensive picture of Vietnamese Americans

in their early days in the U.S

After careful research, to examine linguistic data most dynamically and thoroughly as possible, I adopted methodology mainly developed within the Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) framework (Halliday, 1970; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004; Martin & White, 2005; Eggins, 2005;), particularly the Appraisal Theory ((Martin, 2000; Martin & Rose, 2003; 2008; Martin & White, 2005) with the Attitude system, in which the evaluate language is used to formulate a stance from the author‟s point of view expressed either explicitly or implicitly Hence, the adaptation of the Appraisal framework in this study will facilitate the exploration of psychological development of the characters and the author‟s perspective in the chosen chapter

2 Aim of the Study and Research question

The study aims to investigate the psychological progression of a Vietnamese American family with two generations to find the difficulties they struggle with while living

in another country, the U.S The linguistic resources were analyzed from the systemic functional perspective, particularly Appraisal theory specializing in the Attitude system as described in the previous section

With the aim mentioned, the research question of the thesis is:

How is the Vietnamese refugees‟ psychological progression represented through the Affectual resources in the chapter “I‟d love you to want me”?

3 The significance of the Study

The topic of Vietnamese refugees has been extensively studied through various approaches, yet rarely has it been investigated from the viewpoint of SFL, especially Appraisal theory Hence, this thesis examines the topic of Vietnamese refugees through the

a quantitative and qualitative study in the light of Appraisal theory, the thesis is expected to make a modest contribution to the incredible treasure trove of SFL-related studies and a more insightful understanding of Vietnamese refugees in the U.S

4 Scope of the study

The thesis studies the psychological progression of Vietnamese refugees as they managed their life, depicted in one chapter of the book In terms of theory, the scope of the study was confined to listing and analyzing based on the theoretical framework of Appraisal, focusing on the Attitude subdivision only In addition, the meaning-based classification was employed as the main analytical framework, the lexico-grammatical classification was employed only as the supplementary tool for exploring the observation related to language choice In terms of data collection and data analysis, the study‟s corpora are collected from the book “The Refugees”, particularly the chapter “I‟d love you to want me”

5 Structure of the study

This study is developed into 5 chapters:

Chapter 1: Introduction includes rationale of the study, statement of research

questions and research aims, significance of the study, scope of the study and the structure of the thesis paper

Chapter 2: Literature review is the theoretical review of Appraisal Theory and related

studies This chapter provides a glimpse into the Affect, Attitude subsystem of Appraisal Theory, which is the primary theory deployed in this study

Chapter 3: Methodology outlines the research methods in the study This chapter

details research design, description of the corpus, data collection and data analysis

Chapter 4: Findings and discussion presents the findings, along with the analysis and

discussion

Chapter 5: Conclusion offers a summary of major findings, implications, limitations

of the research and suggestions for further studies

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

1 Overview

This chapter will cover three main areas Initially, there will be a general review of appraisal research on literature and linguistics study on refugees in general and those from Vietnam to the U.S in particular Past relevant studies are reviewed regarding their contribution as well as how the researcher can seal the gaps in those researches

The next area is text analysis techniques that have been widely employed in the field

as tools for examining linguistic resources in literature to draw the desired conclusion Two contrastive approaches, traditional grammar (Lock, 1996:1) and systemic functional (Halliday, 1985; Martin, Matthiessen & Painter, 1997; Eggins, 2005), will be discussed and compared, thus acting as an explanation why the SFL approach has been chosen for this project Subsequently, appraisal theory will be addressed with a more insightful examination into the Attitude system as the basis for analyzing linguistic resources of this project

Finally, the researcher presents important quintessential background information about the worldwide refugee exodus as well as the book and the chapter chosen for study to facilitate the readers‟ comprehension of the research

2 Theoretical Preliminaries

2.1 Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL)

An above-three-century history of linguistics has attested its striking development in any aspect, especially grammar study There have been a variety of approaches that comprehensively cover almost every aspect of grammar, namely transformational generative grammar, mental grammar popularized by Noam Chomsky, cognitive grammar coined by Ronald Langacker, and immediate constituent grammar by Leonard Bloomfield Among those, systemic functional grammar developed by distinguished linguists including Halliday, Hassan, Morley, Bloor has been considered as one of the most valuable and productive approaches to linguistics in the sense that "A functional grammar is essentially a 'natural' grammar, in the sense that everything in it can be explained, ultimately, by reference to how language is used" (Halliday, 1994, p xiii)

The early theories about traditional grammar deem grammar as "a set of rules which specify all the possible structure of the language where grammatical and ungrammatical sentences are distinguished clearly" (Lock, 1996:1) This kind of grammar prescribes rules about using English properly to illustrate correct or incorrect examples cited from eminent standard authors, namely Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Addison, and Pope (Bornstein, 1977, p.8) However, traditional grammar has several limitations, the two significant among which relating to its confined use among a particular portion of the population or worse, its discrimination against the language of immigrants, blue-collar class, or indigenous students,

as well as its inapplicability to aspects of writing (Gerot & Wignell, 1994) In contrast, based

on systemic linguistics, functional grammar accents how language functions and operates in different social contexts, examining language as a social semiotic system In other words, functional grammar, regarded as functional rather than formal, can be a resourceful alternative for communicative purposes rather than a set of rules (Halliday, 1994) as it deals with grammatical patterns, lexical items employed in the text, and the explanation behind the choice of those items with the focus on "the development of the grammatical system as a means for people to interact with each other" (Martin et al., 1997:1)

Therefore, Halliday has suggested that functional grammar achieves the purpose of wording and its interpretation in association with its meaning to "make it possible to say sensible and useful things about any text" (Halliday, 1994) It also means that functional grammar is particularly applicable to explaining the choice and the organization of language

in a text that serves a particular socio-cultural purpose

2.2 Three metafunctions of language

As a macro-level linguistic approach, SFL also provides a detailed description of functional grammar, emphasizing that the choice of words and clause structures is affected by language's roles in the interactions This can be realized by observing grammar from the perspective of three concurrent interactive sorts of meaning, which Halliday entitled

„metafunctions‟: textual, interpersonal, and ideational (Byrnes, 2009; Halliday, 1985; Martin

et al., 1997)

(i) The textual metafunction deals with how the text is constructed to maintain the flow of information from one clause to another It is referred to as “clause as a message”

(ii) The interpersonal metafunction pertains to the writer‟s perspective and relationship with readers, with an aim to enact social relationships as interaction is inherent to any language This refers to “clause as an exchange”

(iii) The ideational metafunction concerns the experiential and logical process within a text The former deals with “clause as the representation” of one‟s experience and the latter is

to do with the dependent and interdependent relationships among clauses

Another lens we need to consider is realization – the concept that language is a stratified semiotic system comprising three rounds of coding at different levels of abstraction (Martin & White, 2005) (Fig 1) The first level is phonology and graphology, which facilitate the concrete realization of spoken and written language, respectively The next level of abstraction in SFL is lexicogrammar, a recording system of phonological and graphological patterns into words and utterances The third level is referred to as discourse semantics to highlight that this layer concerns meaning beyond the clause level (texts, in other words) At this level, there are numerous aspects of discourse organization covered, including how things are first mentioned in the text and kept track of once there (identification); how one event or state of affair is linked to another regarding time, cause, contrast, and similarity (conjunction), how related the participants are as part to whole and sub-class to class (ideation); or how the author establishes evaluation and attitude (appraisal)

Figure 1

Language strata

2.3 Appraisal Theory

2.3.1 Overview

Appraisal theory has been developed by Australian linguists of the SFL school (Martin, 2000; Martin & Rose, 2003; 2008; Martin & White, 2005) Located as an interpersonal system at the level of discourse analysis in SFL, it concerns discourse semantic resources that the author deploys to assemble particular authorial personae for themselves, to engage the reader, and negotiate emotions, judgments, and valuations These attitudinal resources are not simply personal but interpersonal, which the writer exploits to establish solidarity with the reader The Appraisal system consists of three interacting domains, namely Attitude, Engagement, and Graduation

Attitude, which comprises three subsystems, namely Affect, Judgement, and Appreciation, deals with resources construing various aspects of feelings, including emotion reactions ("I'm depressed"), a judgment of behavior ("They make the story depressing"), and evaluation of things ("This movie is very depressing") In other words, the writer's emotion, ethics, and aesthetics will be covered Hence, this subsystem is of particular interest to this study and will be analyzed in more detail in the next section

Engagement allows the writer to register his degree of commitment to the value position being advanced and his projection of readers' potential response to that position by quoting or reporting, acknowledging a possibility, denying, countering, affirming, and so on

It deals directly with several argumentation-related aspects, such as writer intentionality and audience awareness

Graduation is concerned with adjusting the degree of an evaluation (e.g., "This is a really interesting task.") This system is generally considered a feature of both Attitude and Engagement systems (Martin & White, 2005)

The whole framework of Appraisal Theory is given below:

- Positive/negative assessment acted as emotional reactions (labeled „Affect‟)

- Positive/negative evaluation of human behavior and character expressed through admiration, criticism, praise, or condemnation by reference to ethics/morality and other systems of conventionalized or institutionalized standards (labeled „Judgment‟)

- Assessments of semiotic and national phenomena in terms of how they are assigned value socially in a given field (labeled „Appreciation‟) considering their aesthetic qualities, their harmful or beneficial potential, their social salience, to name a few

These three higher-level categories are then further divided into more distinct delicate subcategories

2.3.2.1 Affect

Affect deals with semantic resources for interpreting emotional reactions and registering positive and negative feelings such as happiness, sadness, confidence, fear, boredom, or curiosity Affect is also the emotional reaction to a person, thing, event, or condition of affairs, and it is expressed through lexical items such as emotion verbs, emotion adverbs, and emotion adjectives, as well as nominalization It can be positive or negative, implicit or explicit, authorial or non-authorial, and so on

Attitude was created as a semantic discourse system (Martin & White, 2005), thus the general realizations of Affect grammar and semantics are self-evident Affect, which is concerned with emotional response and disposition, is typically realized through mental reaction processes and attributive relational states (e.g., I'm sad; I'm angry; She's proud of her son; He's afraid of snakes, etc), as well as normalization of qualities and processes (e.g., His jealousy made everyone bored) Systematically, Appraisal values in general, and Affectual positioning in particular, can be represented by the following:

(1) Verbs of emotion (behavioral, mental or relational process)

e.g., She smiled at me

She liked that man

She felt disappointed about me

(2) Adverbs (mostly circumstances of manner)

e.g., The teacher left angrily

(3) Adjectives of emotion:

e.g., I am proud that you won the game

(4) Nominalization (when verbs and adjectives turn into nouns)

e.g., His pride was obvious to all

(5) A phrase

e.g., Only after the young couple left could she relax, sighing as deeply as she could

in the strict confines of her velvet ao dai

Affect as „nominalization‟ Fear, joy, sadness, grief, etc Subject

Object,

A grammatical metaphor that includes nominalized realizations of qualities (joy, sadness, sorrow, grief, sobs) and processes can also be used to express Affect (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014) This kind of evaluation is also examined in a literary research carried out

by Tran (2020), hence the researcher decided to include it as one of the baseline for data collection

According to Martin and Rose (2007) and Martin and White (2005), Affect (assessment of emotion, reaction to behavior, text process, phenomena) can be subclassified

on six following factors, several of which have been foregrounded in the grammar of English (after Halliday, 1994)

First, it investigates whether the feelings popularly construed by the culture is positive (the participants enjoy that experience) or negative (the experience is better avoided)

e.g.,

I was happy (positive Affect)

She was sad (negative Affect)

The second aspect is whether the feelings are realized as a wave of emotion involving some embodied paralinguistic or extralinguistic demonstrations or more internally experienced as a kind of emotive mood or continuing mental process This difference is

constructed based on the antagonism between behavioral (e.g., She smiled at him) versus mental (e.g., She loved him) or relational (e.g., She felt disappointed about him) processes

e.g.,

The man nodded his head continuously (behavioral surge)

The man felt terrible (mental process/state)

The third aspect is whether the feelings are interpreted as directed at or responding to some specific emotional stimulation or as a general ongoing mood for which one might question „Why are you feeling that way?‟ and receive the answer „I‟m not sure why.‟ Grammatically, this distinction is constructed as the contrast between mental processes (She loves him/he disappointed her) and relational states (she‟s sad/disappointed)

e.g.,

The boy hated leaving/leaving displeased the boy (reaction to other)

The boy was disappointed (undirected mood)

Fourth, how the feelings/emotions are graded – towards the lower-valued end of a scale of intensity or the higher-valued end; or somewhere in between is examined At this stage, there is no expectation to imply that low, medium, and high are discrete values (as with

modality – Halliday 1994: 358–9), but expect that most emotions offer lexicalizations that grade along an equally distributed scale

e.g.,

The boy disliked eating apples (low)

The boy hated eating apples (median)

The boy loathed eating apples (high)

According to Halliday (1970), there are two main approaches to language analysis derived from the interpersonal macro-function, namely mood, modality Appraisal is another approach concerned with this metafunction, later developed by Martin (2000) Therefore, the researcher could say that these are three distinctive networks to analyze language in the perspective of interpersonal metafunction However, Martin and White (2005) have included modality into appraisal, which has been illustrated in the above-mentioned fourth factor In this research, the researcher will use Halliday‟s theory as a baseline, which means the appraisal framework is separated from mood and modality In other words, this study will not

assess data based on this fourth factor: how emotions are graded

Fifth, do the feelings involve subjective intention (rather than reaction) concerning a stimulus that is irrealis (instead of realis)? Grammatically, this difference is constructed as the opposition between desiderative and emotive mental processes

e.g

The boy disliked eating apples (realis)

The boy feared eating apples (irrealis)

In brief, the five categories as listed are based on the lexico-grammatical realization of the language, which means all analyses of these categories are located in the second circle in Figure 1

Meanwhile, the sixth is the classification by content, or meaning-based, which means the linguistic analyses based on this category are located in the outermost circle in Figure 1

In this category, Affect can be classified by content, in which the emotions are categorized

into four main semantic subtypes: un/happiness, in/security, dis/satisfaction and

dis/inclination

Un/happiness covers emotions concerned with „affairs of the heart‟ – sorrow,

resentment, happiness and love and can be expressed through words as weep, laugh, cheerful, hate, sorrow…

In/security relates to emotions concerned with eco-social well-being such as tension,

anxiety, confidence, and faith It also covers the feeling of peace and anxiety in relation to the

surroundings This set can be particularly presented through words as anxious, shaking, comfortable, confident, safe…

Dis/satisfaction embraces emotions concerned with telos (the pursuit of goals), the

feeling of achievement and frustration – ennui, displeasure, curiosity, respect Words like

uncomfortable, attentive, compliment…are used to express Dis/satisfaction

Dis/inclination appertains to irrealis Affect, which describe feelings foregrounding

intention rather than reaction Common words used to refer to Dis/inclination are words of

behavior like tremble, desire, want, demand… and words of disposition like keen, miss,

wary…

A relation can be noticed is the one between the construal of feelings as either realis or irrealis and the semantic space of Affect which is differentiated as un/happiness, dis/satisfaction, in/security, and dis/inclination, also known as the fifth and the sixth category

of Martin and White‟s (2005) framework On a more specific note, Affect as dis/inclination refers to an irrealis choice in which „feelings relate to future, as yet unrealized, states rather than present existing ones‟ (Martin 2000:150) while Affect as the other three (un/happiness, dis/satisfaction and in/security) expresses realis choices This relation is visualized in the following table for better understanding

Table 2

Relation between two ways of classification of Affects

Mrs Khanh had never

needed help with the garden

She returned to her car

determined to find the

an evoked Appraisal is displayed implicitly by reference, for instance, to metaphorical language that can provoke a specific meaning Martin (2000:155) explicates:

[As] far as reading affect is concerned, inscribed Affect is more prescriptive about the reading position naturalized - it is harder to resist or ignore; evoked affect on the other hand is more open - accommodating a wider range of reading positions, including readings that may work against the response otherwise naturalized by the text

Table 3 illustrates the meaning-based subtypes of the Affect and Affectual values based on Martin and White (2005) and refined by Ngo and Unsworth (2015), with examples included Table 3

Four meaning-based subtypes of Affect adapted from Martin and White (2005), Ngo and Unsworth (2015)

Four subtypes Positive Negative

UN/HAPPINESS - cheer – laugh, cheerful,

- affection – hug, love,

- misery – cry, sad,

- antipathy – abuse, hate,

IN/SECURITY - confidence – no pressure,

confident,

- trust – optimistic, trusted,

- disquiet – stressed, nervous,

- distrust – never trust,

reluctant, reserve, suspicion, doubt/doubtful,

DIS/INCLINATION desire – miss, long for, yearn

for,

non-desire – ignore, neglect,

reluctant, refuse to, disinclined,

It can be clearly seen that there are two ways to assess Affectual resources, which is the theory developed by Martin and White (2005) and the one by Martin and Rose (2007) Among those, the former is considered to be detailed and specific while the latter more general Thus, the researcher will base on the theory proposed by Martin and White to assess the data

In addition, White (2015) proposed terms for the emotional responses of the first, second, and third person: Authorial Affect and Observed Affect Authorial Affect is the first-person emotional response in which the speaker or writer is emotionally involved in expressing affect or related to the author's own emotions; Authorial Affect "strongly foregrounds his/her subjective presence in the communicative process" (White, 2015) The speakers or writers of Non-Authorial Affect express the feelings of others Those are the cases

"where the emotions of other human individuals or groups are described rather than the author's" (White, 2015) As a result, s/he evaluates others' emotions in the second and third person For example, when someone says, "I am into reading novels," they are expressing their interest, and this Affect is Authorial Affect In other words, the first person is not emotionally invested in or concerned about other people's emotions On the other hand, when someone says, "Many researchers are worried about their upcoming presentations," they are not expressing their feelings about the situation (Ananda et al., 2018) This is known as Non-Authorial Affect, in which the first person merely expresses Affect from the second or third-person perspective

In short, Affect can be expressed through lexico-grammatical realizations like types of words or word classes, phrases, clauses, or sentences Those realizations can be categorized into four semantic sub-types: dis/inclination, un/happiness, in/security, and dis/satisfaction, which can be further grouped into positive and negative polarities Additional ways to examine Affect are based on different strategies (behavioral surge or mental process/state,

authorial) Affects, which lie in the lexico-grammatical stratum of the language, could only be used as a supplementary tool to assist the meaning-based assessment of the Affectual resources

3 Refugee exodus worldwide

The situation and problems of refugees worldwide, including internal and international migration, are identified as one of the world's global problems in the 21st century Immigration continues to play an increasingly important role in international and national affairs More people are migrating today than at any other time in human history There are many reasons for migration, such as settling down, finding a job, studying, reuniting with family, securing a better future for their children, to name a few In addition, many others leave their hometown, fleeing from crime, violence, conflict, terrorism, insecurity, discrimination, natural disasters and environmental degradation, poverty Demographic factors, globalization, and climate change will increase migration pressure both within and beyond national borders in the coming decades

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), in 2017, there were 7,300 million people, and one out of seven people migrated, with an estimated 1,000 million people, representing 3.3% of the world's population Of these 244 million people living abroad (up 41% from 2000), more than 90% are economic migrants One in every 33 people

in the world today is a migrant, with an annual increase of approximately 2.9% In addition, it

is estimated that there are at least 50 million illegal or undocumented migrants globally - a figure that amounts to 15% to 25% of all international migrants

As immigration has emerged as a protracted topic for debate, it is noted that the researcher looks into its long-standing history of numerous waves of refugees fleeing their country to start a new life in another One of the most outstanding immigration is Vietnamese

"boat people" who left Vietnam for the U.S after the fall of Saigon This event marks the start

of a myriad of stories about Vietnamese Americans, particularly the book "The refugees", whose linguistic resources are chosen to investigate in this study

4 Related previous studies

4.1 Appraisal studies

Since the creation of Appraisal Theory and its subsequent development, it has been applied in various areas of discourse analysis, including news, legal, scientific and academic Among them, the study of literary works has proved the effectiveness of this framework for examining attitudes expressed and interpersonal meanings in the text Most literary studies concentrate on English literary works

Li (2016) identified Attitude resources in the English song discourse using Appraisal devices Because it reflects Western humanistic ideas, the study found that the usage of Affect and Appreciation is a crucial component in English song discourse As English culture places

a greater emphasis on individuality, human cognition and emotion are deeply ingrained in the culture The Attitude Resource for Affect and Appreciation is commonly employed in English song discourse under the influence of English culture to emphasize not only the author's passionate emotion but also the author's function as a behavior subject

Netty et al (2019) discovered three attitudinal components in literary works by Indonesian migrants in Hong Kong, namely Affect, Judgment, and Appreciation In examining the language used by Indonesian migrants to their moms, the study found that negative attitudinal lexis dominated good attitudinal lexis, and the number of Affect is higher than Judgment and Appreciation The existence of more negative data suggested that the writers and their parents had issues, and that the writers and their parents had opposing opinions on items, attitudes, conduct, or occurrences

Tran Van Phuoc (2019) used Martin and White's (2005) Theory to gather and characterize five Vietnamese writers' selections of Affectual Values to analyze the sentiments and emotions of five main characters in five Vietnamese short tales The goal of the study was

to find lexical-grammatical realizations of four domains in positive and negative, explicit and implicit affect orientations from characters in short stories: (1) Happiness, (2) Satisfaction, (3) Security, and (4) Inclination In addition, the author of the essay offered some advice to students or future authors on how to communicate their opinions

There are some other studies deploying Appraisal Theory in literary works Guan and Wang (2006) used Appraisal Theory to examine the power dynamics among the characters in Hotel's "Blackmail" by using appraisal resources at three different levels: word, phrase, and discourse Another study by Zhao and Chen (2011) employed the Attitude system to investigate Elizabeth's attitudes in Pride and Prejudice in order to identify interpersonal meanings Ataei (2019) used Attitude in her investigation of the Twilight novel's emotional language Hadidi and Mohammadbagheri-Parvin conducted a stylistic analysis of F Scott Fitzgerald's novel "The Great Gatsby" by applying the Attitude System of Appraisal Framework to the text (2015) The study on Attitude in the novel "The old man and the sea"

by Tran (2020) is another study that uses appraisal as a baseline For each character in the narrative, each Appraisal type was mentioned, along with their frequencies and percentages This research found that the story's Attitudinal language was used in the order of Appreciation, Judgment, and Affect; that "Attitude was stylistically indicative of and worked

in line with character and context within the novel in question"; and that "Attitude was stylistically indicative of and worked in line with character and context within the novel in question" (p.130) As a result, it can be argued that attitude resources are best used in literary analysis to study interpersonal meanings and how characters are effectively portrayed

Some other threads of study on Appraisal have been carried out by many researchers, with various types of discourse being investigated, ranging from national anthems (De Souza, 2006), social media reports (Chiluwa and Ifukor, 2015), travel advertisements (Nguyen, 2015), film reviews (Phan, 2017) and there are also some comparative studies, such as Le Huu Loc's (2019) study on An Attitudinal Analysis of Expressives by the Judges in The Voice

UK versus The Voice Vietnam

It can be easily seen that the studies using Appraisal Theory in other threads outnumber those in literacy discourse Therefore, this research is hoped to fill in that gap

4.2 Studies about refugees

There has been a myriad of studies about refugees worldwide, regarding different aspects: the migration patterns, the post-migration settlement, the psychological well-being, to name a few Ryan, Dooley and Beson (2008) applied the psychological stress model and

refugee‟s life with the focus on individual‟s deficiencies in terms of psychiatric symptoms or distressing emotion Murphy, Keogh and Higgins (2018) studied the derivation of meaning in life through the narration of 16 African asylum seekers about their experiences in Ireland and how it triggered their mental health distress Käckmeister and Mesgena (2021) investigated the movement of unaccompanied minors to both Israel and Germany to compare and contrast how respective migration regimes deal with the primacy of child and youth in these two countries

Particularly for the Vietnamese refugees, their arrival to the U.S has attracted undivided attention from the public in general and scholars worldwide in particular For decades, many studies have revolved around Vietnamese refugees in America, analyzing various aspects, namely their immigration patterns, socioeconomic status, and prospects for development in the U.S (Doan, 1977; Montero, 1979) Additionally, previous studies also examined the demographic profiles of Vietnamese refugees who came to the U.S after the fall of Saigon (Kelly, 1977; Liu &Muratta, 1977b; Rahe, Looney, Ward, et al., 1978) and how these people were psychologically unprepared to start life anew and their post-war struggles (Liu & Muratta, 1977a) Also, a study showed that immigrant parents and offspring often gain different perspectives, emotions, as well as expectations of social acceptance as they settle down in the new country (Zhou & Bankston, 2001)

Most of the previous studies are approached from a socioeconomic or historical perspective Meanwhile, the researcher can hardly find a project examined from a linguistics approach, especially from a literary work by a refugee himself Hence, my study is hoped to provide a more diverse and insightful look into how the Vietnamese refugees start life in a new country

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY

1 Research design

The study is a discourse research with a focus on human emotion and characteristics description used in literary discourse Both qualitative and quantitative methods were employed to examine and display the desired outcomes This study is designed as a discourse analysis in the light of Appraisal theory, with qualitative analysis as the main method and quantitative calculation the assisting tool

The corpus was read and investigated with undivided attention, and the items were extracted using the Attitude sub-system of the Appraisal Theory, with the focus on the Affect sub-category and coded regarding their polarity, strategies and non/authorial Affect The feelings and characteristics are quantified in terms of their frequency of appearance Finally, the qualitative analysis was performed with reference to the discursive features of the novel and the interpretations and the results were supported by the quantitative data

2 Corpus

2.1 About the book and the chapter “I‟d love you to want me”

"The Refugees" by Viet Thanh Nguyen is a collection of eight short stories about the fate of Vietnamese refugees in the United States One similarity they share is that they are all haunted by the past The war, the sea crossing, the early days of coming to America keep flashing back to them

The life of the elderly refugee is also mentioned through the short story "I'd Love You

to Want Me" The Professor is one of the protagonists in the story, who has been diagnosed with dementia As the story goes on, his condition gets worse and it is more and more apparent that he struggles to deal with the difference between the memories in his mind and his presence He gradually loses all the memories he shared with his wife and his little family, has trouble remembering dates and information, and cannot remember the way home The story reaches climax when the Professor calls his wife by the wrong name at times, which makes her initially upset yet things change when she realizes that she needs to sacrifice her identity for her husband‟s sanity

The main character of the story is Mrs Khanh She is the wife of the Professor, who is likely to have Alzheimer‟s Since her husband‟s diagnosis, she has herself prepared for a lot

of things to come, however, it is the most shocking to Mrs Khanh when her husband calls her

by the name of another woman - Yen She started to have dramatic changes in her emotions and behaviors Each time being called by the wrong name, Mrs Khanh reacts in different manners, ranging from surprise, jealousy, anger to acceptance and finally calling herself Yen She makes some attempts to help the Professor realize that he is making a mistake However,

as time goes by, she decides that it is crucial and best for the Professor to turn herself into a ghost, stopping her job at the library, socializing less and less and considering herself as a woman named Yen when the Professor does not know her as who she is

A minor character in the Chapter yet worth mentioning is Vinh, the Professor and Mrs Khanh‟s son Vinh grows up in the U.S, being “stubborn” and disobedient to his parents When noticing his father‟s condition, Minh insists his mother quit her job at the library to stay

at home taking care of the Professor, but Mrs Khanh refuses to

2.2 Data

Textual samples from the novel "The refugees" as a literary discourse sample were the linguistic data The selected text for literary discourse is the chapter "I'd love you to want me", the fifth out of the eight short stories in "The refugees" by the Vietnamese American author Viet Thanh Nguyen The plot develops the depiction of the refugees' relationships and their efforts to manage their life with memories that come flooding back and generation gaps among two different generations in the family With such data, the researcher is expecting a high percentage of negative feelings as the prominent patterns in the text On the other hand, considering that the story's setting is in a family, an equal amount of happiness and positive feeling is also expected The short story was selected based on the researcher's own interest and the fact that it possesses a historical and humane value that grabbed the special attention, with more than 500,000 books published and in 2017, it received the Honor Award of Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature

3 Data collection

As mentioned above, Attitude is investigated as a discourse semantic system, thus its realization can be expected to vary in a range of grammatical structures And this is undoubtedly true to the case of Affect These realizations consist of modification of participants and processes, affective mental and behavioral process, modal Adjuncts, and nominalization

The researcher scanned the story in a technically and theoretically sensitive manner five independent times Each sentence was read and studied in context In the first three times, each time 2 days apart, Affectual resources realizing those aforementioned modifications were analyzed and described with a qualitative approach Then, the researcher employed a quantitative approach to find out the frequency of occurrence of 4 sub-types of Affects, their polarity, strategies and non/authorial Affect After around 2 weeks, the researcher scanned the Chapter again for the fourth time to check whether the chosen and classified data satisfied the requirements There were several changes at this time as the researcher realized some mistakes in the previous collection The final data collection (the fifth time) occurred one week later, in which no changes were applied

4 Data analysis

The system of Affect in Appraisal Theory was employed as the theoretical framework for data analysis As the aim of this study is to explore the psychological progression of the refugees, semantic analysis was the main analytical instrument The meaning-based analytical framework (Fig.3) including 4 content-based subtypes of Affect was employed in sorting the affectual resources, then synthesized to conclude about the polarity (positive or negative) of Affect and further discuss the psychological development of the refugees The lexico-grammatical analysis (of language choices in the chapter functioned as only an additional tool which could inform the researcher of any remarkable language use pattern of the author The remarkable pattern would be related to the meaning-based findings to explore any possible influences that the lexico-grammatical choices might have on the meaning

It is also note-worthy that the positive polarity comprises the sum of happiness, security, satisfaction and inclination while the negative one contains the sum of unhappiness,

insecurity, dissatisfaction and disinclination It can be visualized in Figure 3 with the Affect subtypes and the equations for positive and negative polarity

Figure 3

Analytical framework

n (Hap) + n (Sec) + n (Sat) + n (Inc) = n Positive

n (UnHap) + n (InSec) + n (DisSat) + n (DisIn) = n Negative

n: total number of Affects of each type

Each value was analyzed line by line using the underline, bold and color-coding function of Word to label different types of each Affectual value After careful reads, the frequency of each value was figured out by the counting function The data was then imported

to Excel for calculation Thanks to the aid of these tools, the frequency and the proportion of each value were calculated precisely The calculation results were then visualized through tables and figures, which serve as an interpretation of the results and solve the research problems The numbers and figures were then explained in light of the features of literary discourse and what it intended to offer to the reader The analysis of sample data is shown in

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

In this chapter, which is considered the most crucial part of the study, the data analysis results and discussion of the research findings are presented First, the data were analyzed to

be allocated to Affect system's four subgroups - un/happiness, dis/satisfaction, in/security, and dis/inclination, which were then interpreted in terms of polarity - positive or negative The analysis of strategies - behavioral surge or mental process and undirected mood or reaction to others, and authorial or non-authorial dichotomies were the supplemented sources that may initiate any further discussion of the additional effects that the author might want to create from the chapter "I'd love you to want me" The role of Affectual Resources in exploring the psychological development of each character and transmitting the messages through each character, event, and plot was then discussed and explained

It is worth noting that the nature of this study is qualitative and quantification is used

to illuminate the results and enhance their credibility Another point worth pointing out is that, based on long-established discourse theories, the interpretation of discourse is greatly reliant

on the context in which it is located Therefore, every word, phrase, and above-the-phrase lexical item is to be assessed according to the context they occur in

1 Findings

Overall, 216 Affectual instances have been identified in the chosen chapter It can be seen that all types of Affect values have been employed by the author to depict the psychological progression of the refugees in the chapter Remarkably, in/security, dis/inclination and un/happiness Affectual value, or also known as realis values account for nearly 85% of the whole Affectual values, with the most proportions is of in/security (31%) This is followed closely by two categories un/happiness with the frequency of occurrence of 28% and dis/satisfaction with that of 23% in the decreasing order In the meantime, dis/inclination Affectual values, also known as irrealis values, occupies for only 18%, the least popularly-used value

In the following section, the frequencies of each Affect value will be illustrated and further explained