AN INVESTIGATION INTO ATTITUDINAL RESOURCES IN ENGLISH LOVE SHORT STORIES

Appraisal Theory developed by Martin and White 2005 wasemployed as a framework to analyze thirty English love short stories.. These can befound in all genres of literature, especially in

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STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

Except where reference is made in the text of the research paper, this

thesis “ An Investigation into Attitudinal Resources in English love short

stories” contain no material published elsewhere or extracted in the whole, or

in part from paper by which I have qualified for or been award another degree

I would like to express my sincere thanks to all of my professors at QuyNhon University for their useful lectures that provided a solid foundation for

me to carry out the study

Lastly, I am deeply grateful to my friends who gave me greatencouragement and interesting discussions as well as all of the member of myfamily for their love, understanding and support

The study aims to examine attitudinal resources used in English loveshort stories Appraisal Theory developed by Martin and White (2005) wasemployed as a framework to analyze thirty English love short stories The datawas mainly collected from Chobir Dokan and Success of Life, which are blogsabout love, friendship, and life The combination of quantitative andqualitative methods was applied for the data analysis The findings show thatAffect resources are used the most in the stories, followed by Judgment andfinally Appreciation The findings also show that implicit judgment on humanbehavior depicted in the English love short story occurs more frequently thanexplicit one The study makes some theoretical and practical contribution tolanguage learning, teaching and translating practices

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Rationale

We – human beings are distinct from animals since we communicatethrough language It is our most important tool in expressing our thoughts andfeelings to each other Language influences what we think and how we think;language gives us a way of reflecting on our thinking, talking about ourthinking, thereby enabling us to greater control over our thinking

It can be seen clearly that learning a language cannot be separated fromlearning the culture where the language is spoken This means language is oneamong other products of cultures This integration of cultures is carried out invarious areas of daily life such as economy, politics, sports, tourism, art andliterature Literature is said to be a reflection of the society in which there aregood values and ills Literature, as a mirror of human life, often presents apicture of what people think, say and do in the society It also commendsvirtues or good values for people in the society to emulate These can befound in all genres of literature, especially in love short stories, in which wecan discover the feelings of love through the language - attitudinal values - thewriters often employ to convey their messages towards the readers

Hallidays’s (1994) view on language and language learning address therelationship between social meaning and language form Instead of describinglanguage as a self contained system of rules, he has attempted to describe it interms of its use as a symbolic system reflecting the meanings generated andshared within social group Therefore, the concept of language is a tool toconvey our thoughts, ideas, concepts or feelings

The Appraisal Theory (AT) is an extension of the linguistic theories of

Halliday (1994) and his colleagues - Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL).

It has emerged over a period of almost 15 years as a result of the workconducted by a group of researchers led by Professor James Martin of theLinguistics Department of the University of Sydney AT is an approach toexploring, describing and explaining the way language is used to evaluate, toadopt stances, to construct textual personas and to manage interpersonalpositioning and relationships.

As has been observed in the works on AT, the issue of showingemotion through language has been an interest for researchers usingfunctionally and semiotically oriented approaches AT can be also considered

a full-blown theory that provides those linguists with a systematic andthorough approach in doing the research on the issue of using emotionalelements in any kinds of discourse These have inspired me to carry out the

study “An investigation into Attitudinal Resources in English love short

stories” with the aim to find out how the writers employ attitudinal resources

to convey their messages towards the readers On the basis of the results ofthe study, I can give some suggestions in teaching and learning English as aforeign language

1.2 Aims and objectives

1.2.1 Aims

This study was carried out to uncover and analyze attitudinal resourcesused in English love short stories The study further attempts to demonstratehow the identified attitudinal elements function to convey the messages of thewriters towards the readers

1.2.2 Objectives

The objectives of the study are:

1 To find out the attitudinal resources employed in English love short stories;

2 To examine how the identified attitudinal resources are used to convey the messages of the writers towards the readers

1.3 Research questions

The study aims at investigating the following questions:

1 What types of attitudinal resources are used in English love short stories?

2 How are the identified attitudinal resources used to convey the messages

of the writers towards the readers?

1.4 Scope of the study

We would like to study English love short stories in the light ofAppraisal Theory by Martin (2005) Because of the limitation of time and ourown ability, in this thesis we just mainly focus on the attitudinal resourcesemployed to convey the messages of the writers Moreover, the relevant dataare taken just from thirty English love short stories

1.5 Significance of the study

Findings of the study are expected to offer both theoretical andpractical contributions Theoretically, the findings of the study will providethe information for further research to be done on this field using AppraisalTheory Practically, the study will provide some practical suggestions forteaching and learning English as a foreign language

1.6 Organization of the study

The study is organized into five chapters as follows:

Chapter 1, Introduction, contains the rationale, aims and objectives,

research questions, the scope of the study, the significance of the study, andthe organization of the study

Chapter 2, Literature Review provides the theoretical background on

which the present study is based Also, this chapter presents a review ofprevious studies on the topic of the thesis

Chapter 3, Research Methodology and Procedure, describes research

methods, research procedures, description of data, data analysis Besides,reliability and validity of the data are mentioned in this chapter

Chapter 4, Findings and Discussion, focuses on analyzing the data and

discussing the results found through the analysis of data

Chapter 5, Conclusions and Implications, gives a summary of the

results of the study It also offers the implications, the limitations of the study

and the suggestions for further research.

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter consists of two parts The first part will present thetheories which are relevant to the purpose of the study The second part is thedescription of the prior research related to the study

2.1 Theoretical background

2.1.1 Systemic Functional Linguistics

Although it has been mentioned in the previous chapter that AT is afull-blown theory about emotion in text, the theory is still put “under theheading” of another theory: SFL, Systemic Functional Linguistics, was firstintroduced and developed by the English linguist Michael AlexanderKirkwood Halliday, emeritus professor of linguistics at the University ofSydney, Australia It is an approach to linguistics that considers language as asocial semiotic system

Halliday (1994:53) introduces the general functional concepts which

relate to the three aspects of the meanings of the clause: ideational, interpersonal, and textual He states that they are “different kinds of meaning potential that relate to the most general functions that language has evolved to serve.” (Halliday, 2004:198) Ideational meanings deal with the way the language represents the interlocutor’s experience Interpersonal meanings

focus on the interactivity of the language which is used to describe interaction

and to convey attitudes Textual meanings tend to organize experiential and

interpersonal meanings into a linear and coherent whole

Halliday (1994) states that the interpersonal meta-function can be

realized lexico-grammatically by mood and modality Mood system, whichconsists of Subject and Finite element, is the system to establish and maintainroles and role relationships between interlocutors Modality system, which

can be further divided into Modalization and Modulation, refers to theintermediate ground between positive and negative polarity It functions toexpress the speaker’s attitude and judgement It is worth noting that theinterpersonal metafunction serves to be the basis of the whole enterprise of

AT The following section deals with this theory in detail

2.1.2 Appraisal Theory

Appraisal is a relatively new branch of linguistics, developed primarily

by Martin (2005) and his colleagues and derived from Halliday’s theory ofSystemic Functional Linguistics A great deal of their work is derived fromthe University of Sydney, Australia According to White (2001: 1), Appraisal

is defined as “An approach to exploring, describing and explaining the way language is used to evaluate, to adopt stances, to construct textual personal and to manage interpersonal positionings and relationships”.

AT concerns itself with the interpersonal meaning of a language It isconsidered to be a significant development within the paradigm of SFL Themajor concerns of AT include how writers or speakers express their stancetoward the things or on-going events in the world, how they express theiragreement or disagreement with the potential responses from the otherreaders, and how they establish and strengthen their identities in a text ordiscourse Martin and White (2005: 20) believe that Appraisal items in alanguage should be assigned to the rank of discourse semantics The level ofdiscourse semantics is more abstract than the level of grammar and lexis,which is more abstract than the level of phonology and graphology Thehighest rank, discourse semantics, is about how to organize clauses into ameaningful discourse The function practiced by Appraisal items in adiscourse is to help writers or speakers to express their evaluation, negotiatetheir relationship with the respondents, and establish their persona

Appraisal is divided into three sub-systems including Attitude, Engagement and Graduation In the system of meanings labeled as Attitude, three semantic categories are involved: Affect, Judgment, and Appreciation.

They refer to the concepts of emotion, ethics and aesthetics respectively Thefocus of the study is on Attitude, which is presented in more detail below

2.1.3 Attitude

According to Martin and White (2005), Attitude is a resource oflanguage that enables writers to express their attitude(s) towards people,events, and other phenomena It is expressed through words of judgment,

appreciation, or emotion Attitude covers “our feelings, including emotional reactions, Judgments of behavior and evaluation of things” (ibid) Attitude

can be divided into sub-types, namely Affect, Judgment and Appreciation.Below are explanations of each region

2.1.3.1 Affect

Affect deals with positive and negative feelings of people such as

happiness or sadness, confidence or anxiety, interest or bore In the domain of

affect, the different categories can be identified on the basis of the following

factors, being drawn from Martin and White (2005: 46-49):

(1) The Dis/Inclination subcategory relates to fear and desire as

outlined in Table 2.1 below

Table 2.1 Affect - Dis/Inclination (Martin and White, 2005: 48) DIS/INCLINATION Surge (of behavior) Disposition

shudder fearful cower terrorized

request long for demand yearn for

(2) The un/happiness set of meanings is probably the first to come to

mind when we think about emotions, and it is included in all of the

inventories we have encountered It covers emotions concerned with “affairs

of heart” – sadness, hate, happiness and love as in Table 2.2

Table 2.2 Affect - Un/happiness (Martin and White, 2005: 49) UN/HAPPINESS Surge (of behavior) Disposition

unhappiness Whimper down [low]

Happiness Chuckle Cheerful

(3) The in/security variable covers our feelings of peace and anxiety in

relation to our environs, including the people sharing with them It covers emotionsconcerned with ecosocial well-being – anxiety, fear, confidence and trust aspresented in Table 2.3

Table 2.3 Affect - In/security (Martin and White, 2005: 50) In/security Surge (of behavior) Disposition

(4) The dis/satisfaction deals with our feelings of achievement and

frustration in relation to the activities in which we are engaged It covers emotionsconcerned with telos (the pursuit of goals) - ennui, displeasure, curiosity, respect aspresented in Table 2.4

Table 2.4 Affect - Dis/satisfaction (Martin and White, 2005: 51) DIS/SATISFACTION Surge (of behavior) Disposition

2.1.3.2 Judgment

The second category of Attitude is Judgment This Appraisal categoryrefers to the expression of evaluations about the ethics, morality, or socialvalues of people’s behavior, which capture the speaker’s evaluation of theverbal, mental or physical behavior of others In this sense, Judgmentrepresents resources for evaluating someone’s behavior as conforming to the

speaker’s social norms These appraisals would answer the question how would you judge that behavior? However, according to the authors, the analysis of Judgment must distinguish between what can be termed inscribed (or explicit) judgment and tokens of Judgment (implicit) In the

inscribed/explicit category, the evaluation is explicitly presented by means of

a lexical item carrying the Judgment value It is possible, as Martin and White(2005) argue on the Appraisal webpage, that Judgment values are evoked

rather than inscribed, via tokens of Judgment These tokens have the capacity

in the culture to evoke judgmental responses (depending upon the reader’ssocial/ cultural/ideological position)

Judgment is sub-divided into two categories by Martin & White (2005:

65): (a) those dealing with 'social esteem' and (b) those regarding 'social sanction' Social esteem is the region of judgments in which the evaluation of

people’s conduct is based on social ethics or on a standard of appropriateness

Judgments of esteem (criticism or admiration) have to do with 'normality' (how unusual someone is), 'capacity' (how capable they are) and 'tenacity' (how resolute they are) In contrast, social sanction is the region of judgments

in which the evaluation of people’s conduct is based on legal/religious rules

Unlike those underlying social esteem, the rules on which social sanction are

based are usually codified in writing, as edicts, decrees, rules, regulations andlaws about how to behave as surveilled by church and state Therefore,

Table 2.5 Judgments of Esteem and Sanction (Martin and White, 2005: 53)

SOCIAL Positive [admire] Negative [criticise] ESTEEM

Normality lucky, fortunate, charmed …; unlucky, hapless, star-crossed …;

Capacity powerful, vigorous, robust …; mild, weak, whimpy …;

literate, educated, learned …; illiterate, uneducated, ignorant

unsuccessful, unproductive …

Tenacity plucky, brave, heroic …; timid, cowardly, gutless …;

tireless, persevering, resolute …; weak, distracted, despondent …;

Table 2.6 Types and Sub-types of Judgment (Martin & White, 2005:53)

Types of Sub-types Positive Negative Judgement

Normality Luck, fortunate Unlucky, hapless,

SOCIAL Capacity vigorous, robust, mild, weak, unsound,

ESTEEM ‘How capable?’ sound… sick, crippled…

Tenacity plucky, brave, timid, cowardly, gutless,

Veracity truthful, honest, dishonest, lying,

SOCIAL ‘How honest?’ frank… deceptive, devious…

SANCTION Propriety bad, immoral, evil,

Besides, as Martin and White (2005) state, there is a connectionbetween Modality/Modulation and Judgment Specifically, modalities ofability can be related to Judgments of Capacity:

I’ll leave for New York.

I’m determined to leave for New York.

(ibid)

And modulations of obligation can be related to lexicalized Judgments

of Propriety:

He should go.

It’s expected he’ll go.

(ibid)

2.1.3.3 Appreciation

The third region of feeling is Appreciation This attitude "involves

evaluations of semiotic and natural phenomena." In other words, this attitudeinvestigates how certain events are evaluated by the author or speaker, for

example a fan's rave review of a Stevie Ray Vaughn CD: “ and, as a bonus,

a very psychedelic, destructive (literally!), cathartic, and liberatory version

of Jimi Hendrix's 'Third Stone from the Sun'.” [Amazon.com online reviews]

Martin & White (2005: 69) distinguish three categories within thisattitude: (a) "our 'reactions' to things (do they catch our attention?; do theyplease us?, (b) their 'composition' (balance and complexity), and (c) their'value' (how innovative, authentic, timely, etc.)."

Illustrative realizations for Appreciation are presented in Table 2.7below

Table 2.7 Types of appreciation (Martin and White, 2005: 56)

Positive Negative Reaction

Reaction

Composition

Composition

Valuation penetrating, profound, deep …; shallow, reductive …;

In terms of grammar, Martin and White (2005) state that we might

think of Reaction, Composition and Valuation in relation to mental processes Reaction is related to affection (emotive – “It attracts me”, desiderative – “I need it”), Composition deals with perception (our view of order), and Valuation is related to cognition (our considered opinions) In other words,

the Appreciation framework might be interpreted metafunctionally – with

Reaction oriented to interpersonal significance, Composition to textual organization and Valuation to ideational worth (Martin & White, 2005) The

whole system of Attitude is summarized in the figure below

Normality: fortunate, haplessEsteem Capacity: powerful, weak

Tenacity: resolute, recklessSanction Veracity: truthful, dishonest

Propriety: ethical, immoralReaction impact: exciting, tedious

Quality: good, nastyComposition Balance: unified, discordant

Complexity: simple, simplisticValuation: profound, shallow

Figure 2.1 Sub-system 0f Attitude (Martin & White, 2005:42-58)

2.1.4 Engagement

Engagement deals with language resources for positioning thespeaker's/author's voice with respect to the various propositions and proposalsconveyed by a text In other words, through Engagement, the writer eitheraffirms or distances himself/herself from what is written/spoken In Martin’swork (2003) on the Appraisal system in English, he indicates thatEngagement is related to “the speaker’s degree of commitment to theAppraisal being expressed” (ibid: 142)

The Engagement system, as Martin (2000) states, can be divided as

monoglossia (single voice) and heteroglossia (multiple voices), where the

former mostly appears in narrative genres, in which the authorial voice is

dominant The heteroglossic nature of academic writing can “[invoke] or allow for dialogistic alternatives” i.e., allowing other voices to participate in

the text, or as references to support and evidence

Heteroglossia is further divided into two dimensions: the dialogic

expansion and contraction The former deals with semantic resources

entertaining other voices, acknowledging sources, distancing from theauthorial voice The latter is used to narrow the space for certain dialogicalternative through DISCLAIM (denial and countering) and PROCLAIM(limitation) DISCLAIM is further divided into DENY (negation) andCOUNTER (concession), while PROCLAIM has three subcategories:CONCUR (alignment), PRONOUNCE (emphasis of authorial intervention)and ENDORSEMENT (sourcing warrantable external sources)

2.1.5 Graduation

Graduation covers language sources used to make the message in thetext more intense or less intense When we make the message more or less

intense, we are modifying the force of the message On the other hand, when

we sharpen or blur the message, we are modifying the focus of the message.

Focus covers those meanings which are elsewhere typically analyzed

under the headings of ‘hedging’ and ‘vague language’ Typical values are: he kindly admitted it; he effectively admitted it, he as good as admitted etc; a whale is a fish, softly Also, values which sharpen rather than blur the focus are included; for example, a true friend, pure folly, he drank his friend under the table, literally.

Force includes values which have elsewhere been labeled such as

intensifiers, down-tones, boosters, emphatics etc Perhaps this category’s most

obvious mode of expression is through the adverbs of intensification; for

instance, slightly, a bit, somewhat, rather, really, very, completely etc.

Somewhat more problematically, this principle of scaling also applies to thosevalues which act to measure quantity, extent, and proximity in time and space

such as small, large; a few, many, near, far etc Force may also be expressed

through lexical items in which the scaling value (typically a high value ofintensity) is fused with some ideational meaning This mode of force is found

widely in the media; for example, the temperature plunged, prices skyrocketed, they've axed the entire accounting division, the storm cut a swath through etc.

Followings are the examples to illustrate these categories:

Force:

Social networks are somewhat harmful.

Social networks are really harmful.

I just don’t love country music, I adore it.

Focus:

Well they play something which is sort of like jazz music.

They play true jazz.

(White, 1998: 3)

In summary, the Appraisal system includes three main domains,namely attitude, engagement and graduation Attitude deals with our feelings,including emotional reactions, judgments of behavior and evaluation ofthings It can be interpreted as “praise” or “blame” in so far as it can becategorized as positive or negative evaluation Engagement is concerned withlanguage that reveals the sources of opinions while graduation is concernedwith language that explores the degree of evaluation

Within the Attitude system, there are three main types of attitude thatcan be tracked: Affect, Judgment, and Appreciation Affect deals withresources for construing emotional reactions Judgment is concerned withresources for assessing behavior according to various normative principles.Appreciation looks at resources for construing the value of things, includingnatural phenomena and semiosis.The system of Attitude serves as theframework of the study The section that follows deals with previous studies

2.2 Previous studies

After more than 15 years of development, the Theory of Appraisal hasbeen attracting more and more attention from a number of reseachers Up tonow, there have been a lot of studies carried out to analyze different fields oflinguistics from the perspective of Appraisal theory First of all, Ruth E Page(2003) analyzes the evaluation offered by women and men when narratingexperiences about childbirth His study supports current trends in the study of

language and gender Besides, Birot (2008) in the study “Evaluation Media Reporting: A Comparative Analysis in BBC, CNN and Aljazera Reports”

focuses on the three sub-types of Attitude, namely Affect, Judgement andAppreciation to examine the evaluative language employed by different mediaagencies named BBC, CNN and Aljazera By exploring evaluation patternsoccurring in three sets of media reports, he found out the perspective of theagency released each set of reports and the relationship between theperspective of a media agency and the social cultural contexts in which it

broadcasts Furthermore, Wang (2010: I) examines “the operationality and practicability of Martin’s Appraisal theory towards the exploration on the interpersonal meaning and the distribution rules of Appraisal resources in Nobel Prize for Literature Acceptance Speeches (NPFLAS)” His findings

show that (1) three kinds of Appraisal – Attitude, Engagement and Graduation

– are used in NPFLAS, (2) the interpersonal function is mainly realized by theprosodic structures in NPFLAS and (3) the use of positive attitude is morethan that of negative attitude This thesis proves the importance of theinterpersonal meaning of Appraisal resources in NPFLAS Pascual & Unger(2010) focus on using Appraisal to evaluate Argentinean researchers’ writingfor grant proposals while Giles (2012) analyzes the evaluative language used

by undergraduate student writers in a Mexican university in the introductions

of their final research reports All these studies have contributed a lot toevaluate the language by using Appraisal theory

In recent years, in Vietnam, the theory of Appraisal has also attractedthe interest of numerous researchers More and more master theses concerningthis theory have been carried out For example, in her study of discourseanalysis, Nguyen Uy Dung (2010) investigated and pointed out somelinguistic features of stylistic devices in political speeches by the US

Presidents in light of AT Particularly, Vo Duy Duc (2011) in his study “Style, Structure and Ideology in English and Vietnamese Business Hard News Reporting: A Comparative Study” uses Appraisal Theory to evaluate the

language of hard business news in English and Vietnamese His findings from

this thesis reveal that English and Vietnamese texts generally share “the same orbital structure and that these new stories basically operate with the same reporter voice” and there is a remarkable difference between English and

Vietnamese in the presentation of the key social groups These findings makecontributions toward teaching English for journalism at tertiary level inVietnam Furthermore, Nguyen Thi Thanh Hien (2014) conducts a study forexploring interpersonal meaning in hotel brochures written in English andVietnamese Her thesis is carried out based on Appraisal theory with different

carry out the thesis “An investigation into Attitudinal Resources in English

love short stories” with a hope to fulfill the overall picture of this field.

Furthermore, it is hoped that this thesis will help language learners of Englishhave a better insight into the use of attitudinal resources in love short stories

2.3 Summary

In chapter 2, we have reviewed the previous studies and theories ofAppraisal Theory, especially the Attitude resources from the overviews ofmany linguists in which the studies of Martin & White are significant in terms

of theoretical background of this thesis Along with that, we have consultedthe definitions and classifications of Appraisal theory as well as Attituderesources and then showed the differences between the three sub divisions ofAttitude All of the above support us for analyzing the Attitude resources inthe love stories

CHAPTER 3 METHODS AND PROCEDURES

This chapter describes the research methods carried out in the study Italso presents the description of data, data analysis and research procedures.Last but not least, it mentions the reliability and validity of the study

3.1 Research Methods

This research is carried out with the methods as follows:

Firstly, the study employs the combination of qualitative andquantitative methods The quantitative method is useful for determining thepercentage of the attitudinal resources while the qualitative method is used toanalyze and describe the function the attitudinal resources employed in thedata perform

Secondly, the analysis of the texts was also approached from acombination of analytic and synthetic methods The analytic perspective is toidentify and isolate certain aspects to focus on, and the synthetic perspective

is to view the interdependence of these constituent parts - how they worktogether as a whole

Finally, the descriptive method is used to give a detailed description ofthe data It is used to describe the ways attitudinal resources function toconvey the messages of the writers towards the readers

3.2 Description of data

The data for this study are thirty English love short stories with thelengths varying from 1000 to 1500 words selected from the famous websitesabout love as followings:

https://www.chobirdokan.com/wp-content/uploads/love-short-stories.jpghttp://www.planetofsuccess.com/blog/beautiful-short-love-stories

https://www.chobirdokan.com/wp-content/uploads/cute-short-love-stories.jpghttps://www.chobirdokan.com/wp-content/uploads/cute-sad-love-stories.jpghttp://www.planetofsuccess.com/blog/beautiful-short-love-stories/

http://mylovablearticle.blogspot.com/

429060/

3.4 Research procedures

The study was carried out as follows:

- First, the topic for our investigation was chosen by a thoroug

review of previous studies

- Next, the data was collected;

- Then, the attitudinal resources used in thirty English love short stories were identified;

- After that, the ways the writers used the attitudinal resources to convey their messages towards their readers were discussed;

- Finally, some implications for teaching and learning English as a foreign language were suggested

3.5 Reliability and validity

The two important criteria to guarantee the quality of data arereliability and validity

In terms of reliability, the data for this study was collected from thefamous blogs as mentioned in the references Therefore, the quality of thedata is quite reliable

In terms of validity, the theoretical background for this thesis is based

on ideas and theories of well-known linguists presented in widely-circulatedpublications

For the factors mentioned above, it can be said that the reliability andvalidity of the study are guaranteed

In summary, this chapter covers major methods as well as necessarysteps which provide a solid foundation for the collection and analysis of thedata for the study The next chapter will deal with the findings of the studyand the discussion of the findings

CHAPTER 4 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

This chapter presents the results of the study statistically and discussesthem to verify the objectives mentioned in chapter 1 First, AttitudinalResources (ARs) employed in the thirty short love stories will be presentedand described in detail Then, the function of the ARs in conveying themessages the writers towards the readers will be discussed and explained.Finally, a model analysis will be shown to demonstrate how attitude isexpressed in one of the thirty love short stories

4.1 General features of ARs in English Love short stories (ELSSs)

The table below displays the total number of ARs found in the whole ofthe corpus examined

Table 4.1 ARs in thirty short love stories

ARsAffect Judgement Appreciation Total

Table 4.1 shows that all of the three sub-types of Attitude includingAffect, Jugdement and Appreciationare used in the thirty English love shortstories However, they are distributed differently That is, among the threesub-systems, Emotional items occur with the most frequency percentage Thispattern in the use of ARs implies the fact that writers of ELSSs pay muchattention to the expression of the feelings and emotions of the people who fall

in love Besides, there are more than Judgment items employed in ELSSs thanAppreciation ones This may reveal that the writers of ELSSs emphasize more

on attitudinal items towards behavior which they admire or criticize,

praise or condemn than ones concerned with evaluations of semioic and natural phenomena.The distribution of ARs in ELSSs and their messages will

be shown in the following sections on the individual categories of Attitude

4.2 ARs of Affect

Affect concerns the semantic resources used to construe emotions.Therefore, it can be considered as a useful tool for love story writers toexpress successfully their love feelings and emotions The following table andchart display the distribution of the 178 Affect items namely Dis/Inclination,Un/happiness, In/security and Dis/satisfaction in the thirty English short lovestories

Table 4 2 Affect in the ELSSs

Figure 4.1 ARs of Affect

From Table 4.2 and Figure 4.1, it can be seen that all types of Affectresources are employed in ELSSs However, the frequency of occurrence ofeach type is distributed differently in the corpus of the data In the thirtyEnglish love short stories, Un/Happiness is the Affect item with the highestpercentage, with 74% of occurrence, being followed by Dis/Inclination with17% of occurrence Then, in the decreasing order, In/Security andDis/Satisfaction appear with 6% and 3%, respectively

4.2.1 Dis/Inclination

The first type of Affect items used in ELSSs is Dis/Inclination, andmost of the items employed here are used to express desire The word whosefrequency of occurrence is found to be statistically significant in expressing

desire is want with different intended meanings Firstly, this word is used to

show the things the people want their lovers to do for them or want to do fortheir lovers, just like in the following examples:

(4.1) “I do not only want to learn how to apply her makeup; I want her

to wear the most beautiful make-up so her inner beauty

also shines on the outside.” [E10]

(4.2) She thought of him hugging her from behind as she washed dishes

in the kitchen, she got reminded of her grumbling at him when hedid those little irritating things- throwing towel here and there,relaxing on lounge as she cooked and cleaned, or coming in to

help when she at least wanted those…[E21]

(4.3) With a tear in his eye and a smile on his face, he meekly said, “I

understand I just want you to always be happy Take care of

yourself, and my eyes.” [E28]

(4.4) After a while, she suddenly decided to move abroad, claiming that

she wanted to earn some money for us He wanted to make her his

wife [E29]

Secondly, the word want is employed to express the desire of

the people who fall in love, as can be seen in the examples below:

(4.5) He really wanted to ask her out but he didn’t have the courage.

[E12]

(4.6) The girl wants to meet him for the last time but he didn’t.

(4.7) The girl then asked the boy to pull over because she wanted to

talk [E27]

In addition, the writers employ this word to imply some more different meanings which can be found in the cases below:

(4.8) Ravana came to hear how very beautiful Sit a was He wanted to

make her his wife [E22]

(4.9) The young groom looked shocked “You want me to shut the

door? Here I am, a new bridegroom dressed in my fine clothes and

wearing my jeweled dagger, and you want me to do a servant’s

chore? No, I will not Go and shut it yourself.”[E23]

From example (4.8), it can be seen that the word wanted is used to

show his determination to fight for possession of the woman he liked In

contrast, the words want in the example (4.9) are used by the young groom to

mean that his wife is commanding him to shut the door or do a servant’schore, which makes him feel not satified

Also, in ELSSs, the writers employ this word with negative word not.

This is shown in the following examples:

(4.10) In the mean time the girl’s family brought so many marriage

proposals for her The girl said “No, I do not want to marry now.”

[E13]

(4.11) One day, she broke up with him and told him, "I do not ever

want to see you again in my life You already died for me I am

done with you." [E14]

(4.12) She does not wish to let the guy know and not wanting to be a

burden to him, she wrote a letter to him saying that she does notwish to wait any longer [E18]

Although the same words are used, different meanings are expressed In

example (4.10), the girl does not want to express her refusal of marriage proposals for her so that she can wait for her lover In contrast, the phrase not ever want in the example (4.11) is employed to mean that the girl is bored

with her lover and she expects not to meet him again In instance (4.12), the