Tóm Tắt Appreciation And Force In English And Vietnamese Sports Commentaries (Đánh Giá Và Lực Trong Bình Luận Thể Thao Tiếng Anh Và Tiếng Việt).Pdf

THE UNIVERSITY OF DANANG UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE STUDIES TRẦN HỮU THUẦN APPRECIATION AND FORCE IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE SPORTS COMMENTARIES Major: THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE... Gro

THE UNIVERSITY OF DANANG

UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE STUDIES

TRẦN HỮU THUẦN

APPRECIATION AND FORCE

IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE SPORTS COMMENTARIES

Major: THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

This thesis has been completed at University of Foreign Language

Studies, The University of Da Nang

This thesis is available for the purpose of reference at:

- Center for Information Technology and Learning Resources, University of Foreign Language Studies – The University of Danang

- The University of Danang – Center for Learning Information Resources and Communication

- National Library of Vietnam.

ABSTRACT

The language of sports commentaries often reflects evaluative stances, which allows writers to express attitudes and engage readers in the dynamic context of sporting events This doctoral thesis investigated the use of Appreciation and Force in English and Vietnamese written sports commentaries Grounded in Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday, 1989, 1994, 2004) and the Appraisal Theory developed by Martin and White (2005), the study aims to explore the semantic features and grammatical structures associated with these evaluative resources in both languages Adopting a descriptive, contrastive approach, the research employed both quantitative and qualitative methods to collect and analyze 777 evaluative tokens extracted from 150 English and 150 Vietnamese written sports commentaries, including 396 English and

381 Vietnamese instances of Appreciation and Force The data were sourced from four selected English and Vietnamese online sports newspapers published between 2018 and 2024 The study applied a comprehensive analytical framework adapted from Appraisal Theory

by Martin and White (2005) to examine how Appreciation and Force were realized in the two languages, enabling a comparative analysis

of evaluative meaning-making in sports discourse The findings highlight both similarities and differences in the use of evaluative language with insights into how attitudes are linguistically constructed and communicated in sports commentaries In conclusion, the findings of this research are expected to advance our understanding of the linguistic features, grammatical structures, and communicative functions of evaluative language in sports discourse with a contribution to the fields of contrastive linguistics, evaluative language studies, and discourse analysis

Chapter One INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale

Language plays a vital role in human communication, allowing individuals to express their ideas and opinions In sports commentaries, language serves as a tool for sportswriters to convey their intentions, assert their opinions, and evoke emotions from the audience Evaluative language, particularly Appreciation and Force,

is commonly used by sportswriters to express their attitudes and intensify their statements However, to understand these evaluative aspects of English and even our native language is not an easy task for learners because of the differences in language systems concerning the linguistic resources for Appreciation and Force It is not natural for many learners of English to take in a statement meaningfully and realize the elements of Appreciation and Force in sports commentaries in English and Vietnamese In view of linguistics, some sportswriters may not understand different shades

of Appreciation and Force clearly to know how to interpret and use these evaluations effectively in their commentaries Moreover, readers may not be able to understand a communicative message thoroughly without being prepared to interpret these evaluative pieces of language In fact, it is rather challenging for language learners as sportswriters and audience/readers to master the way of comprehending semantic values and linguistic realizations of Appreciation and Force in sportswriters’ commentaries Some sportswriters may have difficulties in effectively using the language

of evaluation in terms of subdomains of Appreciation and Force for

an accessible appraisal analysis of their commentaries while audience/readers may have problems in accessing the semantic values of Appreciation and Force in these commentaries Therefore,

the doctoral thesis entitled “Appreciation and Force in English and Vietnamese Sports Commentaries” is chosen as the topic of my

research

1.2 Aims and Objectives of the Study

This thesis aims to examine the use of Appreciation and Force in written sports commentaries, particularly football commentaries, in English and Vietnamese, within the framework of Appraisal Theory proposed by Martin and White (2005), which extends Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar (2004) The study seeks to compare how these evaluative expressions are realized in the two languages for both similarities and differences It also aims to provide English and Vietnamese language learners, sports journalists, and translators with deeper insights and practical knowledge for analyzing and applying evaluative language in writing and translating sports texts

To achieve the aims of the research, the following objectives are intended:

- to examine the semantic features of Appreciation and Force in English and Vietnamese written sports commentaries, particularly football commentaries

- to analyze the grammatical structures realizing Appreciation and Force in English and Vietnamese written sports commentaries

- identify the similarities and differences in the use of Appreciation and Force between English and Vietnamese sports commentaries in terms of both semantic features and grammatical structures

1.3 Scope of the Study

The subject matters of the study are the two evaluative aspects of sports commentaries entertained given by the sportswriters, namely Appreciation and Force, particularly in sports commentaries Specifically, this thesis is concerned with semantic features of Appreciation and Force and the grammatical structures that realize these two appraisal categories in sports commentaries Accordingly, the lexical items or appraising items will be examined

in a descriptive framework in the light of Systemic Functional Grammar with a focus on two constructs semantic features and

grammatical structures realizing Appreciation and Force in sports commentaries The construct semantic features to be examined in this research is understood in a broad sense encompassing both the semantic values of lexical units expressing Appreciation and Force within the framework of Appraisal Theory by Martin and White (2005) and the features of the context, conventions of language use and the goals of the sportswriter Accordingly, the speech functions and implication evoked by the use of the evaluative language of the sportswriters will be concerned In this thesis, the researcher adopts a qualitative methodology to conduct a genre-based analysis which allows for a deeper understanding of how Appreciation and Force are manifested through linguistic choices in English and Vietnamese written sports commentaries

In terms of semantic features, expressions of Appreciation in sports commentaries are examined based on Appraisal theory such as reaction, composition and valuation meaning Expressions of Force

in sports commentaries are only clarified based on Appraisal theory with Force combined with or infused into Appreciation As mentioned above, the thesis also analyzes speech functions used to express Appreciation and Force in sports commentaries with speech functions to highlight the sportswriter’s goal in using the lexical units

in the context of sports events Under the framework of SFL, this thesis chooses to use the term speech function to prefer to what sportswriters are actually trying to do something with our language

to communicate with other people, rather than the term the illocutionary force of speech act which is used by Austin (1962) and Searle (1969) While ‘speech function’ does not directly align with

‘illocutionary force/act’, it can still be useful for understanding the intentions and functions behind utterances in a social context

The grammatical structures realizing Appreciation and Force

in sports commentaries are investigated in terms of Systemic Functional Grammar with classes of lexical items as elements in such ranks of groups Nominal group and adjectival group are mainly

examined as group structure in both English and Vietnamese sports commentaries

With this primary focus, the researcher analyzes the clauses and phrases of sports commentaries in English and Vietnamese which are used by the sportswriters by collecting the data through online sports news about events of football before and after the match Since football becomes the most popular kind of sport around the world, it is called ‘football: the king of sports’ and developed to

be a professional activity whose events and commentaries have a great appeal to both writers and readers

The research particularly picked football commentaries for data analysis because football, known as ‘the king of sports’, has a large worldwide audience and receives widespread media coverage Football commentaries provide rich language data, capturing dynamic platforms, emotional intensity, and a wide range of evaluative phrases and clauses, making it ideal for exploring Appreciation and Force in sports discourse Analyzing football commentaries provides for a full analysis and comparison of evaluative language usage in English and Vietnamese, providing valuable insights into commentators’ communicative strategies

This research mainly focuses on the analysis of written sports commentaries Other subgenres concerned with Appreciation and Force such as sport announcer talk, live text commentary with distinctive features such as prosody, stress, intonation, etc will not

be addressed in this research The data for the study were collected from 2018 until 2024 and were restricted to the four websites specialized in sports from Britain and Vietnam

1.4 Significance of the Study

This thesis is both theoretically and practically significant, offering insights into the use of Appreciation and Force in English and Vietnamese sports commentaries

1.4.1 Theoretical Significance

The study applies Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) and

Appraisal Theory to analyze how language expresses evaluations and attitudes in sports commentaries It contributes to the development and refinement of these frameworks by providing empirical evidence

on the semantic and grammatical features of evaluative language The comparison of English and Vietnamese sports commentaries enhances understanding of linguistic variation, identifying similarities and differences in how Appreciation and Force are expressed These findings enrich knowledge about how language functions in specific contexts, like sports communication

1.4.2 Practical Significance

The study helps sportswriters and commentators use evaluative language more effectively to engage audiences, convey excitement, and evoke emotions and provides learners and educators with tools to better understand and teach the use of Appreciation and Force in sports communication, improving language skills in English and Vietnamese Translators can benefit from insights into how evaluative expressions are used, enabling them to accurately convey meaning and retain the emotional impact in translations In sum, the research supports practical applications in creating impactful sports commentaries, accurate translations, and effective language education

1.5 Working definition

White (2001) claims in his work that Appraisal is ‘an approach

to exploring, describing, and explaining the way language is used to evaluate, to adopt stances, to construct textual personas and to manage interpersonal positionings and relationships’ (White, 2001,

p 1) Martin and White (2005) also state that Appraisal is ‘one of three major discourse semantic resources construing interpersonal meaning’ (Martin & White, 2005, p 34) By these authors, Appreciation is defined as the way ‘we construe our evaluations of

‘things’, especially things we make and performances we give, but also including natural phenomena – what such things are worth (how

we value them)’ (Martin & White, 2005, p 56) They also announce

that Force ‘covers assessments as to degree of intensity and as to amount Assessments of degree of intensity can operate over qualities, over processes, or over the verbal modalities of likelihood, usuality, inclination and obligation (Martin & White, 2005, p 140)

Chapter Two LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Review of Previous Studies

Looking into Appreciation and Force in English and Vietnamese sports commentaries, these studies have some gaps as

follows:

2.1.1 Sports commentaries

2.1.2 Lexis and Grammatical Structures in Sports Commentaries 2.1.3 Appraisal Theory and Systemic Functional Grammar in Sports Commentaries

2.2 Theoretical Background

2.2.1 A Working Definition of Sports Commentaries

2.2.2 Appraisal and Journalistic Discourse

2.2.3 Semantic Categories of Appraisal Values

2.2.4 Grammatical Structure Aspects Concerning Appraisal Values

2.2.5 Speech Functions of Sentences expressing Appraisal Values

2.3 Theoretical Framework

Figure 2.10

Theoretical framework for the study

Chapter Three RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY

3.1 Research Design

Guided by the three research questions, the research was

designed as a descriptive study with contrastive method, employing qualitative and quantitative approach

3.2 Sampling

3.2.1 Sampling method

The sampling was conducted based on parameters to recognize Appreciation and Force so that the selection of samples would be consistent with Martin and White’s (2005) theoretical framework for these evaluative values Together with the criteria of realization and the initial list of lexical units by Martin and White (2005), more additional criteria added by the researcher were applied

to set up as a framework to find and pick out instances of linguistic expressions which expressing appraisal meaning in the appraisal system and subsystems of Appreciation and Force

or lexical cases, attitudinal or non-attitudinal lexeme Force can be examined in combination with or infused into Appreciation instance

as lexical devices to enhance the meaning of Appreciation

3.2.3 Annotating Appreciation and Force

This research was applied the last strategy to annotate the linguistic expressions of Appreciation and Force in English and Vietnamese sports commentaries by considering nominal groups, adjectival groups, and clauses of the expressions, not just on separated word level or any single unit of the analysis

Appreciation annotations in sports commentaries can be

obtained by this suggestion by Martin and White (2005) and the additional proposal by the researcher

3.3 Data Collection

Table 3.4

The description of study data

Article source www.goal.com/, www.skysports.com/, thethao247.vn/, and

thethaovanhoa.vn/

Time frame From 2018 until 2022

Appraisal type Appreciation, Force

Population Online newspaper sports commentaries in Britain and Vietnam Sample A selected sample of Appreciation and Force from 150 English texts

and 150 Vietnamese ones Sample size 777 samples, including 396 English instances and 381 Vietnamese

ones

3.4 Data Analysis

3.4.1 Data Analysis Procedures

The collected data was subjected to thorough analysis to address the following research objectives, (i) to examine the semantic features and grammatical structures realizing Appreciation and Force in English sports commentaries, (ii) to examine the semantic features and grammatical structures realizing Appreciation and Force in Vietnamese sports commentaries, and (iii) to find out the similarities and differences of Appreciation and Force in sports commentaries between English and Vietnamese Measures such as occurrences and frequencies were calculated to provide an overview of the dataset After that, these statistical data were compared to determine similarities, differences, or associations between variables in English and Vietnamese

3.4.1 Analytical framework of the study

Figure 3.2

Analytical framework of the study

Chapter Four APPRECIATION AND FORCE IN ENGLISH SPORTS

COMMENTARIES 4.1 Semantic Features of Appreciation in English Sports