An investigation into the language of appreciation in literature review of theses on language stu

Objectives To achieve the aim of the study, the following objectives are intended: 1 To point out syntactic characteristics of linguistic expressions ofAppreciation used in Literature Re

THE UNIVERSITY OF DANANG

UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE STUDIES

LÊ THỊ HUYỀN KHANH

AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE LANGUAGE OF APPRECIATION IN LITERATURE REVIEW OF THESES ON LANGUAGE STUDIES IN ENGLISH

MASTER THESIS IN LINGUISTICS AND CULTURAL STUDIES

OF FOREIGN COUNTRIES

Da Nang, 2020

THE UNIVERSITY OF DANANG

UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE STUDIES

LÊ THỊ HUYỀN KHANH

AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE LANGUAGE OF APPRECIATION IN LITERATURE REVIEW OF THESES ON LANGUAGE STUDIES IN ENGLISH

Major: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS

Code: 822.02.01

MASTER THESIS IN LINGUISTICS AND CULTURAL

STUDIES OF FOREIGN COUNTRIES

SUPERVISORS: HỒ SĨ THẮNG KIỆT, Ph.D

TRẦN HỮU PHÚC, Assoc Prof Dr.

Da Nang, 2020

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

Except where reference is made in the text of the thesis An Investigation into the Language of Appreciation in Literature Review of Theses on Language Studies

in English, this thesis contains no material published elsewhere or extracted in whole

or in part from a thesis by which I have qualified for or been awarded another degree

on a descriptive framework of functional grammar and appraisal theory The datawere extracted from literature review of master theses, written in English, in terms oflinguistics and English language on websites 170 English samples showing theauthors/ writers' viewpoint about prior studies such as noun phrases, verb phrases,adjective phrases, clauses and sentences were collected from the literature review ofmaster theses The sampling was done with random manner so that every sample hasthe equal opportunity to occur in the data The data were chosen, analyzed andclassified into two different categories in terms of syntactic and semantic features ofAppreciation in the review of literature Syntactically, appreciation was examined inview of clause as message and nominal groups in the light of functional grammar.Semantically, appreciation was analyzed in terms of appraisal theory Based on theresult of data analysis, some implications and suggestions comprehending and usingappreciation in showing writer's appreciative viewpoint were given to Vietnameselearners of English language and those who are interested in the Appraisal ofliterature review in theses.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

IEP Intensive English Program

C-C Composition-Complexity

LIST OF TABLES

Number Name of Tables Page

Table 2.1 Sub-types of Appreciation (Martin & White, 2005, p.57) 11Table 2.2 Types of Appreciation (Martin & White, 2005, p.56) 12

Metafunctions and their reflexes in the grammar (Halliday,

Table 2.3 14 2004,p61)

Figure 4.15 Appreciation in Compound sentence Error!

Bookmar

k not defined.

Figure 4.18 Appreciation in Compound-complex sentence 2Figure 4.19 Appreciation in Compound-complex sentence 3Figure 4.20 Appreciation in Compound-complex sentence 3Figure 4.21

Appreciation in form of Nominal Group: Epithet,Thing

35Figure 4.22

Appreciation in experiential structure of NominalGroup: Deictic, Epithet, Thing

37Figure 4.23 Appreciation in experiential structure of Nominal

Group: Numerative, Epithet, Thing

38Figure 4.24

Appreciation in experiential structure of NominalGroup: Deictic, Epithet, Classifier, Thing

38Figure 4.25

Appreciation in experiential structure of NominalGroup: Deictic, Multi Epithet, Thing

39Figure 4.26 Appreciation in experiential structure of Nominal

Group: Epithet as verb function

40

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

It is generally agreed that language is an effective tool for human to transferand get information with a word, a very simple sentence or a complete, grammaticalform by different ways, written and spoken Through different using purposes,language is used as an instrument of thought or to conceptualize or represent theexperiential or real world to ourselves, including the inner world of ourconsciousness

The past decade has seen the evolution of a research paradigm of Englishlanguage study development In addition, the quality and quantity of linguistic theseshave increased significantly Especially, the importance of examining theappreciation of authors in Literature Review through using the authors' languageexpressions is considered They are sought in overview of other authors' linguisticresearches

While various studies have been previously conducted to study the aspects ofAppraisal theory, most are examined how to use the theory effectively Besides, priorstudies are found in the linguistic features of appreciation function of languagetowards subjects such as football commentaries, writings/ texts of learners ofEnglish, political discourses In other words, in this study, appreciation category isfocused, under the Appraisal theory, in terms of evaluating language in theses inEnglish Specifically, the role of appreciation in using linguistic expressions to showthe author's appreciative viewpoint in Literature review of theses is emphasizedobviously Appreciation construes our evaluations of ‘things' “Especially things wemake and performances we give, but also including natural phenomena - what suchthings are worth (how we value them)” (Martin & White, 2005, p 56)

Moreover, there are some gaps in previous studies which examinedappreciation attitude of the authors in literature review of theses In fact, almost no

10

prior studies have mentioned the evaluative aspects of the language used by theauthors of theses In fact, some language tools used for the literature review havebeen mentioned, namely the reporting verbs However, for example, in terms ofEnglish language study, some authors analyze their modality-oriented researches,which only examine the modal strength of reporting verbs, but little has dealt withindicating evaluative category of the author's language on the other authors' work inthe Literature Review.

From these reasons stated above, I have decided to carry out the study entitled

“An Investigation into the Language of Appreciation in Literature Review of Theses

on Language Studies in English” This is also the assignment needed to continue

clarifying gaps in literature I attempt to analyze evaluative language ofAppreciation Last but not least, it should be studied in extensive depth with the hopethat the investigation can make a significant contribution towards appreciation shownthrough appreciation-functioned expressions in the view of Appraisal theory in theses

1.2.2 Objectives

To achieve the aim of the study, the following objectives are intended:

1) To point out syntactic characteristics of linguistic expressions ofAppreciation used in Literature Review from English language master theses;

2) To find out semantic characteristics of linguistic expressions ofAppreciation used in Literature Review from English language master theses

11

2) What are the semantic features of the appreciation in Literature Review of

of English language master theses?

1.4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The study primarily concentrates on the analysis of Appreciation in LiteratureReview of theses on Language Studies written in English in terms of Appraisaltheory in its widest sense comprising features of syntax and semantics of thelanguage expressions of the authors Appreciation - the language of evaluation, thelast subcategory of Attitude in the Appraisal framework Particularly, the syntacticrealization of appreciation was made in reference to the Functional Grammarframework in terms of Clause as message Semantically, appreciation is examinedwith Appraisal framework such as, reaction-quality, valuation Phonetic features ofspeech acts like stress and intonation are put beyond the scope of this study

The findings of this investigation are expected to indicate the syntactic andsemantic features of appreciation in literature review of theses in terms of appraisaltheory As a result, it can help learners understand more obviously the meanings andgoals for using linguistic expressions to express the author's appreciation inLiterature Reviews in English Hopefully, the study is used for learning, teaching andresearching English Language as far as Appreciation in academic works isconcerned

This investigation includes five chapters as follows:

Chapter 1, Introduction, begins with the rationale for choosing the topic.

Next, aims and objectives of the research, research questions, the scope of the study,

12

the significance of the study and lastly the organization of the study are presented.This chapter provides the framework of this study.

Chapter 2, Literature Review and Theoretical Background, deals with the

previous studies related to the research Some concepts as well as a view oftheoretical background about appreciation are also considered

Chapter 3 involving Research Methodology mentions research design,

research methodology, description of sample, data collection, instruments foranalysis, data analysis It also consists of the reliability and validity of the thesis

Chapter 4, Findings and Discussion, presents and discusses the findings of

this study It concentrates on answering the research questions about the syntacticand semantic features of appreciation in literature review on Language Studieswritten in English It presents the results and discusses the findings of theinvestigation

Chapter 5, Conclusions and Implications, summarizes the main

points of the study as the conclusion A statement of

presented in this chapter

13

So far various studies on Appraisal theory regarding the use of evaluativelanguage have been carried out:

Whitelaw, Garag and Argamon (2005) stated in their research a new method forsentiment classification based on extracting and analyzing appraisal groups Theylearned that use of features depended on appraisal group analysis can significantlyimprove sentiment classification, despite the low coverage of our current appraisallexicon Therefore, it is crucial to develop detailed and varied semantic tools to supportsentiment analysis

Xinghua and Thompson (2009), drawn on the Appraisal theory (Martin & White,2005), report on a case study that investigated the use of evaluative language betweenthe high- and low- rated English argumentative essays by Chinese university EFLstudents The study found that the high-rated argumentative essay successfullyemployed appraisal values to foreground authorial voice and position readers, thusmanipulating agreeability of utterances and building strong persuasion

In addition, Neviarourskaya, Prendinger and Ishizuka (August, 2010) carried out

a research about Recognition of Affect, Judgement, and Appreciation in Text Theyclassified the text using fine-grained attitude labels They also introduced @AMsystem, the only system allocating sentences using fine-grained attitude types anddealing with the semantics of verbs in attitude analysis

Moreover, Zhang (2015) compared the the appraisal resources of two sets ofdisaster new reports over ten years from 1998 to 2008 collected from China Daily, forexamining whether there's improvement in disaster reporting This study shows how todeal with Attitudes in the disaster news to embody human care to the victims and yetkeep the news reports objective.

Nguyễn Thị Thúy Loan (2015, Kalasin University, Thailand) and IssraPramoolsook (2015, Suranaree University of Technology, Thailand) conducted aresearch how reporting verbs in Literature review chapters of TESOL Master's theseswritten by Vietnamese post graduates The authors used Hyland's (2002) classification

of reporting verbs in terms of their denotative and evaluative potentials This paper'sfindings additionally reveal using reporting verbs randomly without being aware of therhetorical functions and some non-idiomatic expressions are also identified

Agata Krizan (2016, University of Maribor Slovenia) explores the occurrenceand frequency of use of attitudinal judgement in British advertisement texts also in thelight of appraisal model (Martin & White, 2005) The research presents that capabilityand propriety often participate in attitudinal double-coding due to the brevity ofadvertising texts and the creativity of advertising language

Besides, many Vietnamese linguistic researcher also have concerned theevaluation of language, and they have thrown light on the Appraisal Theory NguyễnVăn Khôi (2006) mentioned about Proclaim markers in English and Vietnamese relied

on a theoretical framework of Appraisal The syntactic, semantic and pragmaticfeatures of proclaim markers are in epistemic modality, speech act, force dynamics,politeness principles and dialogistic view were mentioned in his study

What's more, Trần Hữu Thuần (2014) carried out the investigation into the use ofAppreciation in football commentaries in English and Vietnamese in terms of syntacticand semantic features based on Appraisa theory His study also concerntrated onfinding out the similarities and differences of the appreciation in football commentaries

in both languages

Trần Thị Ly (2015) investigated the category Attitude in English and Vietnamesearticles warning against childhood epidemics in view of Appraisal framework The

study not only described the language use of all three Attitude's sub categories,including Affect, Judgement and Appreciation but also examined a wide range oflinguistic devices to mark the speakers or writers's attitue with different structures ofverbs, adverbs, adjectives and nouns in the two languages.

Võ Nguyễn Thùy Trang (2016) searched and analyzed the languages ofJudgement and Appreciation in the category of Attitude in Nam Cao's short stories andthe English translational equivalents based mainly on theories of Apprasial framework.The study also considering the grammatical realization of Judgement and Appreciationrelied on Functional Grammar

From the review of previous studies, it can be seen that the issues related toAppraisal theory generally and Appreciation particularly have been carried out a lot inboth Vietnamese and English by not only Vietnamese authors but also foreign authors.However, there has not been a study focusing on the linguistic features of appreciation

in Literature review in English language theses Therefore, it is hoped that thisinvestigation will be a useful source for language learners of English to have a betterinsight into the usage of appreciation in Literature review in English language theses

2.2.1 Appraisal Theory

Appraisal Theory is a framework for analyzing the language of evaluation It hasemerged from within Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) (Halliday & Matthiessen,2004) and was driven in its early days by work in the field of educational linguisticsand the development of Australia's genre-based literacy programs (Christine & Martin,1997; Martin, 2000) It provides techniques for the systemic analysis of evaluation andstance as they operate in whole texts in grouping s of texts

Typically, Appraisal Theory was further developed by Martin and White It is

“concerned with evaluation: the kinds of attitudes that are negotiated in a text,thestrength of the feelings involved and the ways in which values are sourced andreaders aligned.” (Martin & Rose, 2003, p.22) Appraisal theory is involved in thelinguistic resources for by which writers/ speakers come to express, negotiate andnaturalize particular inter-subjective and ultimately ideological positions (Martin andWhite, 2005) The resources of appraisal are used for negotiating our socialrelationship, by telling our listeners/ readers how we feel about things and people(instead, what our attitude are)

Appraisal theory has three domain sub-systems, namely Attitude, Engagement

and Graduation Each of three sub-systems has certain sub-categories Attitude is

concerned with our feelings, including emotional reactions, judgements of behavior

and evaluation of things Engagement deals with sourcing attitudes and the play of voices around opinions in discourse Graduation attends to grading phenomena

whereby feelings are amplified and categories blurred (Martin &White, 2005, p.35).Let us take a look at the figure below:

Figure 2.1 An overview of appraisal resources (Martin & White, 2005, p.38)

Attitude is a framework for three areas of personal feeling: emotion, ethics and

AFFECT

FOCUS

RaiseLowSharpenSoften

aesthetics They refer to three semantic domains, namely Affect, Judgement and Appreciation Affect deals with feelings or emotional states and responses, such as

confident, frightened, etc Judgement refers to the evaluation of human beings and/ or their behaviors, such as responsible, honest, etc Appreciation considers the

evaluation of things, such as simple, important, etc.

2.2.2 Appreciation

2.2.2.1 Definition of Appreciation

Appreciation is recognized as the system by which various evaluations weremade of products, processes and entities are institutionalized Appreciation refers tohow speakers evaluate a text or a process (Eggins & Slade, 1997, p.126) As can beseen, appreciation customarily evaluates natural objects, created objects, texts as well

as more abstract constructs such as literature reviews, commentaries, etc Moreover,appreciation evaluates in different ways all things, including man-made objects,events, things, appearance of human beings, languages

Clearly, Appreciation mostly concerns with what is traditionally known asaesthetic, for example: pretty, simple, attractive, etc “Appreciation involvesevaluations of semiotic and natural phenomena, according to the ways in which theyare valued or not in a given field” (Martin & White, 2005, p.43)

For example: “Her impeccable recitation of the long poem is a thing of beauty.”The appreciation value of “impeccable” in “impeccable recitation” shows a qualityattributed to “Her recitation of the long poem”

Like both affect and judgement, values of appreciation have either positive ornegative assessments (e.g positive: splendid, happy, etc.; negative: unhappy,dangerous, etc.)

2.2.2.2 Types of Appreciation

Martin and White (2005, p.56) state that “Appreciations can be divided into our

‘reaction' to things (do they catch our attention, do they please us?), their ‘composition'(balance and complexity), their ‘value' (how innovative, authentic, timely, etc.)”

For this explanation, Martin & White (2005) gave the illustrative realizations for

Appreciation divided into three types: reaction, composition and valuation They also

stated that these sub-types are put in relation to mental processes, which means how people look at things:

- reaction refers to affection in mental process category (emotive or desiderative)

- composition refers to perception in mental process category how order is viewed - valuation refers to cognition in mental process category, which means how opinions are considered

Types of Appreciation were illustrated and summarized in Figure 2.2

— impact

arresting, captivating

quality

okay, fine, good

Did I like it?

complexity

simple, pure, elegant

Was it hard to follow?

above sub-types within Appreciation framework respectively Reaction is interpersonalsignificance, composition is textual organization, and valuation is ideational worth(Martin & White, 2005, p 57) (as summarized in Table 2.1).

Table 2.1 Sub-types of Appreciation (Martin & White, 2005, p.57)

appreciation mental process type metafunction

According to Rothery & Stenglin (in press) (For a review see Martin 1997: 26), reaction is “interpersonally tuned It describes the emotional impact of the work

24-on the reader/ listener/ viewer.” Hence, under reacti24-on, the products/ processes areevaluated in terms of the impact it makes or its quality For example:

o Reaction-impact: positive - arresting, stunning, dramatic, etc.

o Reaction-impact: negative - dull, uninviting, monotonous, etc.

o Reaction-quality: positive - lovely, splendid, attractive, etc.

o Reaction-quality: negative - ugly, plain, etc.

Under composition, the product or process is evaluated according to its makeup,according to whether it conforms to various conventions of formal organization.According to Rothery & Stenglin (in press), ‘Composition is textually tuned Itdescribes the texture of a work in terms of its complexity or detail.' For example:

o Composition-balance: positive - unified, symmetrical, harmonious, o

Composition-balance: negative - unbalanced, incomplete, discordant, o

complexity: positive - simple, intricate, precise, o complexity: negative - convoluted, simplistic.

Composition-Under valuation, the object, product or process is evaluated according to varioussocial conventions This domain is very closely tied to field in that the social valuation

of one field will not be applicable or relevant in another As a result, we would expectthat the set of social values which have currency in, for example, the visual arts,mightnot have extensive application in the world of politics In the context of themedia texts under which much of this theory was developed, the key values were those

of social significance or salience (whether the phenomenon was important, noteworthy,significant, crucial, etc.) and of harm (whether the phenomenon was damaging,dangerous, unhealthy, etc.), (For a review see Martin 1997: 24-26)

In short, according to Martin & White (2005), three sub-categories ofAppreciation were illustrated and listed together with words in both positive andnegative in Table 2.2 for reaction, composition, and valuation

Table 2.2 Types of Appreciation (Martin & White, 2005, p.56)

Yuk, bad, nasty ;

Plain, ugly, grotesque ;

Composition

-Complexity

Simple, pure, elegant ;

Lucid, clear, precise ;

Intricate, detailed

Ornate, extravagant ;

Arcane, unclear, woolly

Plain, simplistic

Valuation Profound, deep ;

2.2.3 An overview of Syntax in Functional Grammar

Halliday (2004, p.29) discussed that language construes human experience Itnames things, thus construing them into categories; and then, typically, goes furtherand construes the categories into taxonomies, often using more names for doing so.Similarly, language provides a theory of human experience, and certain of theresources of the lexico-grammar of every language are dedicated to that function Healso claimed that while construing, language is always also enacting: enacting ourpersonal and social relationships with the other people around us Thus the clause ofthe grammar is not only a figure, representing some process - some doing orhappening, saying or sensing, being or having - with its various participants andcircumstances; it is also a proposition, or a proposal, whereby we inform or question,give an order or make an offer, and express our appraisal of an attitude towardswhoever we are addressing and what we are talking about

As a result, Halliday (2004) developed the theory of the fundamental functions oflanguage, in which he analyzed lexico-grammar into three main metafunctions:

ideational, interpersonal and textual Each of the three metafunctions is about a

different aspect of the world, and is concerned with a different mode of meaning ofclauses He stated that whereas in the grammar of the clause each componentcontributes a more or less complete structure, a clause is made up of three distinct

structures combined into one He also split the component into two: experiential and logical Being about the natural world in the broadest sense, ideational metafunction is involved with clause as representation Focusing on the social world, especially the

relationship between speaker and hearer, interpersonal metafunction is related to

clause as exchange Finally, reflecting the verbal world especially the flow of information in a text, textual metafunction deals with clause as message Table 2.3

shows a description the metafunctions, matches them up with three different equivalentstatuses in clause

Table 2.3 Metafunctions and their reflexes in the grammar (Halliday, 2004,p61)

Metafunction Definition

(kind of meaning)

Corresponding status in

clause

experiential construing a model of experience Clause as representation

interpersonal enacting social relationships Clause as exchange

textual creating relevance to context Clause as message

logical constructing logical relations —

Each component defines complex units, and in some respects equivalent to aword complex, a combination of words built up on the basis of a particular logicalrelation He called it is a group and he divided into three main classes of group:

nominal group, verbal group and adverbial group; along with a brief reference to preposition and conjunction groups.

This thesis is concerned with the last metafunction: clause as message and the

logical component: nominal group Appreciation in the thesis's literature review is seen

as a message and nominal group

2.2.3.1 Clause as Message

Clause as message is defined a clause which has meaning as a message, aquantum of information by Halliday (2004, p.58) He also claims in all languages theclause has the character of a message: it has some form of organization giving it thestatus of a communicative event, but there are different ways in which this may be

achieved In the clause as a message, there are theme and rheme.

Halliday (2004, p.64) explained that Theme is the element which serves as the

point of departure of the message; it is that which locates and orients the clause withinits context Additionally, he stated that the theme is put first Gerot and Wigneli (1994),talking about theme, note that theme is what the clause is going to be about Theyfurther described that the theme can be identified as that or those element(s) which

come(s) first in the clause Theme represents the point of departure of this message

from the previous one Gerot and Wigneli (1994) shortly state that “this is what I'mtalking about” They also said that in terms of looking at a clause as a message, thetheme looks backwards, relating to the current message to what has gone before.

Rheme is the remainder of the message, the part in which the Theme is developed He further points out that Rheme as a message structure A clause consists

of a Theme accompanied by a Rheme (Halliday, 2004, p.64).

Still in the discussion about Rheme, Gerot and Wigneil (1994) present that Rheme is the rest of the clause new information is contained in the Rheme They further show that Rheme is “This is what I'm saying about it” Gerot and Wigneil (1994) also said that the Rheme points both backwards and forwards by picking up on

information which is already available and adding in it and by presenting informationwhich was not there before

-or Complement Furtherm-ore, nominal groups serve in participant roles in terms of theexperiential structure

There are some functional elements typically distinguished: including Deictic, Numerative, Epithet, Classifier and Head in the system of nominal group.

those two splendid old electric trains

Deictic Numerative Epithet i Epithet 2 Classifier Thing

determiner numeral adjective adjective adjective noun Figure 2.4 Experiential Structure of Part of a Nominal Group (Halliday, 2004, p.312)

2.3 SUMMARY

In summary, this chapter has mentioned the previous studies relating to thisstudy It has also presented in view of appraisal theory and functional grammar Allthese theories serve as a background of the study and will all be the foundation foranalysis in the following chapters

CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH METHODS

Quantitative approach is vital for enabling the calculation of occurrence andfrequency of different sub-types of Appreciation; and finding of language patterninstances concerning syntactic features in English

The data in this study was collected from the websitehttps://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/linguistics_etd/ , with the site Linguistic and EnglishLanguage Theses and Dissertations; in twenty literature reviews from linguisticmaster theses written in English from 2016 to 2018

3.2.1. Sampling of the Study

The data consists of twenty literature reviews in which one hundred andseventy linguistic expressions of appreciations were taken out to analyze Linguisticexpressions of Appreciation in literature reviews of English theses can be a singleword, a phrase, a simple complex or compound sentence The samples were chosenrandomly from their occurrences in literature reviews of linguistic master theseswritten in English

3.2.2. Instruments of Data Collection

After collecting and investigating linguistic expressions of appreciation used inliterature review of linguistics and language studies theses written in English from

the website https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/linguistics_etd/ , I analyzed and classifiedthem in terms of syntactic and semantic features.

3.2.3. Procedures of Data Collection

Based on the research design, the study was conducted and followed these steps:

- Collecting linguistic expressions of appreciations in different sources such asliterature review in linguistic master theses online as much as possible

- Taking note and identifying the chosen samples in terms of syntactic andsemantic features

- Picking out different types of the language of appreciation according tostructural, semantic and functional characteristics

- Analyzing and discussing the results in terms of syntactic and semanticfeatures

- Suggesting some implications in learning, examining or using appreciation forlearners of English language

The linguistic expressions of appreciation used in literature review of linguisticmaster theses written in English were analyzed qualitatively in terms of syntactic andsemantic features with statistical tables On the basis of 170 English samples aregathered, the linguistic expressions of Appreciation used in literature reviews oflinguistic master theses written in English were analyzed in terms of these followingaspects:

s Syntactic features of Appreciation in the view of Functional Grammar.

s Semantic features of Appreciation in the view of Appraisal Theory.

Reliability and validity are the most important criteria to guarantee the quality

of the data collection The syntactic and semantic features of linguistic expressions

of appreciation have been sorted and analyzed carefully based on the theoreticalbackgrounds

In this study, the research focuses only on the syntactic and semantic features

of linguistic expressions of Appreciation in terms of Appraisal framework ofLiterature reviews as representation, and then other linguistic features or differentkinds of text/ writings and processes are not investigated.

The data was systematically collected and extracted from the websitehttps://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/lmguistics_etd/ with the site Linguistics and EnglishLanguage Theses and Dissertations with one hundred and seventy samples It wascrucial that the samples were carefully considered and selected in order to verify areliability and validity of results Hence, the objectivity of the study is assured

All findings and results in this study, providing some theoretical backgroundfor examining some linguistic features, making a contribution to the learning andstudying of English In short, the study is significant not only in theory but also inactual practice Moreover, it can help English learners improve better comprehendingand using of appreciation in general and in communication

CHAPTER 4 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

Chapter 4 demonstrates and discusses the findings of data analysis aboutlinguistic expression of Appreciation in literature reviews of English language mastertheses in terms of syntax in the light of functional grammar and semantic in the light

of appraisal framework These linguistic features are based on the theoreticalbackground, research design and methodology mentioned in the previous chapters

OF APPRECIATION USED IN LITERATURE REVIEW OF THESES IN VIEW OF FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR

This section, I study the syntactic features of linguistic expressions ofAppreciation in the view of Functional Grammar Functional grammar is used forvarious tasks First of all, they use for describing languages in functional terms,which belongs to Halliday's Introduction to Functional Grammar (first published in1994)

The syntactic features of linguistic expressions of Appreciation used inLiterature reviews of linguistic master theses written in English are considered as thesyntactic realizations of the Clause as Message to express information to readersmore persuasively That is to say, Clause as Message is represented by Theme-Rheme structure

Therefore, in terms of the syntactic structures of Clause as Message, the studyfocuses on the linguistic expressions of appreciation in literature review as types ofcomplete sentences Then the structures of nominal groups are taken intoconsideration

4.1.1 Appreciation in Literature reviews of linguistic master theses written in English as Clause as Message

The appreciation of linguistic expressions in Literature reviews of Englishlanguage master theses are analyzed in the view of Clause as Message The

appreciation in Literature reviews is organized in Theme and Rheme Theme is the

part starting from the beginning of the clause The remainder of the message, the part

in which the theme is developed is called Rheme (Halliday, 2004) Theme and rheme

help us understand how information are conveyed in clauses Theme is put first andthe main part of the message, usually comes at the end of the clause or sentence

In literature reviews of theses, authors/ writers usually begin sentences byreferring to the information known by the readers Therefore, the appreciativelanguage of linguistic expressions used in literature reviews of linguistic mastertheses written in English will be described and examined in theme and rheme in thelight of Clause as Message in form of Simple sentences, Complex sentences,Compound sentences, and Compound - complex sentences

4.1.1.1 Appreciation in Simple sentences starting with ‘It'

The appreciation in Literature review is organized in Theme and Rheme Theme

is the part starting from the beginning of the clause The remainder of the message,

the part in which the theme is developed is called Rheme (Halliday, 2004) Theme

and rheme help us understand how information are conveyed in clauses Theme isput first and this part orients the reader to what is about to be communicated It can

be understood that Theme contains ‘given information' How about Rheme? It is therest of the clause, gives ‘new information' which is the main part of the message,often comes at the end of the clause or sentence

Let's consider some examples from (1) to (12) and we obtained an analyticbelow:

[137]

32

It is clear that larger corpora allow researchers to

create word lists that more accurately reflect thelanguage being targeted

It is unavoidable that varying criteria and methods will

be generated based on the scope and context of agiven study

It is important to note that this study made no attempt

to exclude idioms based on their degree ofliteralness, because the nature of determining theliteralness of an idiom is indeed quite subjective

Clearly, it is evident that idiom form variation is an important

issue to consider

It is important to note that the terminology used in

Grant and Bauer's (2004) study may be confusing

to some

It is helpful to clarify that not all negative forces or

factors affect student motivation in the same way

It is impressive that a vocabulary size assessment could

explain such a large percentage of the variance of

a widely-accepted standard of languageproficiency, especially in multiple schools, inmultiple countries and in multiple languages

It is worth mentioning that the first study mentioned

above (by Huang in 2013) used untrained raters,whereas the other two involved trained raters

Evidently,

it

is unclear as to what circumstances and to what

extent rater's familiarity with test-takers L1/accentaffects oral proficiency assessment results

It is apparent from the research that the majority of

studies focused on language anxiety have centered

on the foreign language context

Figure 4.1 Appreciation in Simple sentences with ‘It'

33

[137]

It would be impossible to convert the word families of

the AWL to lemmas for comparisonpurposes in the present study

Otherwise,

it

would be not necessary to put extra effort to reach

their desired L2 self

Obviously, personal pronoun ‘It' in these sentences is theme for showing

authors'/ writers' appreciative viewpoint about topic in literature reviews in theseswritten in English, which makes it possible for readers to make up in their mind what

is mentioned Certainly, readers have been introduced to that but do not know it is

and therefore need to be told As a result, appreciation as an adjective comprising

clear, unavoidable, important, evident, helpful, impressive, worth, unclear, apparent appeared immediately the verb “to be” ‘is' or impossible and not necessary

appeared after the verb phrase ‘would be' {in examples (11) and (12)} Besides, in the example (4) and (9), the writer also added the adverb “Clearly” and “Evidently”

respectively at the beginning of the sentence, before “It” in order to emphasize thewriter's confirmatory viewpoint about the thesis However, personal pronoun ‘It'refers to things that are going to be appraised by the authors/ writers Therefore, in adeclarative sentence, theme is coincided with the subject and we have unmarkedtheme

4.1.1.2 Appreciation in Simple Sentences

Appreciation is used in form of a complete simple sentence A simple sentencemust have only one independent clause that has a subject and a verb and expresses acomplete thought A simple sentence is one of type of declarative sentences Inliterature review of theses, writers/authors often use declarative sentences to showappreciative viewpoint about prior studies In terms of Clause as Message, deeply intheme - rheme structure, the theme comes first and the rheme, which carries theappreciation, remains the following part Let see these examples:

(16) Horwitz (2010) provides a nice summation of these studies and their

[133] results

aut and McCray (2015) reported similar results. [150]

(18) The results of this

study (19) were (20) very interesting.

very interesting, (14) the most broad corpus-based idiom frequency search, (15) salient, (16) a substantial portion, (17) outdated, (18) too small, (19) necessary aspects, (20) a nice summation, (21) similar results As can be seen from these

examples, the Theme always starts from the beginning of the sentence It is what setsthe scene for the clause itself and positions it in relation to the unfolding text In thefirst part, the reader is being led around and invited to notice and appreciate; in thesecond part the reader is held firmly to the topic that is described This suggests thatthe authors/ writers desired Theme that there can be variation in what is chosen as thethematic element in the clause; and this is so From the above examples, nominalgroups are in sentences It can be seen that the Theme in simple sentences is really

35

[137]

(13)[10]

(14) Figure 4.3 Appreciation in Simple sentence

(15)

(16)

(19)

(20)

Difficulty, perceived irrelevance,

boredom, and frustration

Horwitz provides a nice summation of these

studies and their results

simple and clear.

(54) Moreover, appreciation in examples (14) the most broad corpus-based idiom frequency search, (16) a substantial portion, (19) necessary aspects, (20) a nice summation, (21) similar results are noun phrases In the examples (13) very interesting, (17) outdated and (18) too small the rheme is an adjective that is also the

predicate and the complement Hence, these appreciations go with the verb ‘to be” inthe form of present simple tense or simple past tense In addition, the writers addedlevel of these adjectives by ‘very', or ‘too' so as to show their point of view about

appreciating other studies in their literature reviews The appreciation ‘salient' in

example (15) is also an adjective as complement and followed by an adverbialphrase

4.1.1.3 Appreciation in Complex Sentences

(55) Linguistic expressions used in showing their own appreciativeviewpoint in theses' literature reviews are written formally and academically As aresult, complex sentences are often appeared in reviews of literature

(56) In the light of grammar, complex sentences are quite familiar in ourdaily communication and are fascinating components of the English language Acomplex sentence contains an independent clause and at least one dependent clause.Especially in literature reviews from language and linguistic theses written inEnglish, writers/ authors usually use complex sentences because they not only addfuller description but also allow readers know a little more detail in a sentence.Subordinating conjunctions such as ‘because, after, since, if, while, when, etc.' areutilized for connecting independent and dependent clauses in complex sentences Or

if the dependent clause come first, a comma will be truly necessary to separate theclauses Nevertheless, it should be noticed that relative clauses (such as which, that,who) play a part in the transitivity structure of a clause as well as performing alinking function; therefore, they are textual and topical Themes Besides, they can bereduced regularly in sentences in writing theses

(57) The bellow examples will prove that appreciation can be expressed inmore than one clause in complex sentences In other words, a clause may have morethan one Theme Writers' appreciation can be situated in Theme or Rheme orsyntactically in independent (main) clause or dependent (subordinate) clause Let'stake a look at following examples:

36

[137]

36

(58) Specifically, many types of variation occur which create difficulties for

[18] both the corpus researchers and the language learners

(59) Speci

fically, (60) many types of

variation

(61) occur (62) which (63) create difficulties for boththe corpus researchers and the

(73) Figure 4.9 Appreciation in Complex sentence: Adjunct - Theme - Rheme

(74) Even with these limitations, there are studies that have focused on a [27] specific subset of fiction.

37

[137]

(75) Eve

n with

(76) thes

e limitations,

(77) there are

(78)studies

(79) that

(80) have focused on

a specific subset of fiction.

(92) One notable study examined the eye-movements of four-year-olds who [30]

were read an illustrated story multiple times (Evans & Saint-aubin, 2013)

eye-(96)who

(97) wereread an(98) illustrated story

(99) multipletimes

(109) This cross-validation study indicates a great deal of construct validity

[59] of yes/no tests because the Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT) is the most widely used, studied, and validated vocabulary size test in existence

of yes/no tests

(112) because (113) the(114) Voca

bulary(115) Levels Test

(116) is the mostwidely used, studied,

(126) As can be seen from the above Figures 4.9; 4.10; 4.11; 4.12 of

examples (22), (23), (24), (25) respectively, first, we can easily find the position of the appreciation in literature reviews of English language master theses can be located in dependent clauses or independent clauses; or in Theme or Rheme

(127) Appreciation in examples (23) a specific subset of fiction, (24) one notable study, (25) this cross-validation study are noun phrases; while example (22) difficulties is a plural noun Even though their positions or patterns, appreciations all

aim to show writers' appreciating view Second, such these clauses may have more

38

[137]

38

than one Theme or Rheme.

4.1.1.4 Appreciation in Compound Sentences

(128) Linguistic writers also use the compound sentences to appreciate otherprevious theses by linguistic expression of Appreciation in literature reviews Acompound sentence has at least two independent clauses that have related ideas Theindependent clause could be a coordinating conjunction or a semicolon There are

seven coordinating conjunctions which people often memorize as ‘FANBOYS'- for, and, not, but, or, yet, so Let see some examples below:

(129) These studies often make interesting qualitative observations about the

[28] nature of the YA register, but lack a quantitative element

(136) lack a quantitative element

(137) T

heme

(138) Rheme (139) Adjunct (140)(141) Rheme(142) T

heme (145) Theme(143) Rheme (146) Rheme(144) Rheme

(147) Figure 4.13 Appreciation in Compound sentence

(148)

(149) The model has served as a foundation for substantial research, but more

[36] recent work (some of which is cited above) has yielded important

insights that warrant consideration.

(150) The

model as a foundation for(151) has served

substantial research

(152)but (153) morerecent(154) work (some of which

is cited above)

yielded(156) importa

[137]

(166) Suffice it to say, Tinto's model has contributed to an understanding of

[37] dropout behavior, but it does not represent a holistic explanation.

(167) Su

ffice it to

say,

(168) Tinto'smodel

(169) hascontributed to anunderstanding ofdropout behavior,

(170)but (171) it (172) does notrepresent a

holistic explanation.

(173) Ad

junct (174) Theme (175) Rheme

(176)(177) Theme (178) Rheme

(184) As mentioned above, Meara and Jones (1988) validated the original test

by [90] showing moderate correlations with a placement test, and other

researchers have confirmed the validity of the test by various other means as well

(185) As

mentioned

above,

(186) Meara and Jones

(187) validated the original test by showing

moderate correlations with a placement test,

(210) ma

y seem

(211) rat her

(212) sim

(213)but (214) uponcloserexamination,

(215) determining whatqualifies as

a word

(216) is actually

quite complex.

(226) Figure 4.17 Appreciation in Compound sentence

(227) By analyzing, the example sentences embrace more than one theme orrheme and appreciation can be located in themes or rhemes, or even in both of them

in just one compound sentence As clause as message, in Theme - Rheme structure,

40

[137]

40