APPRAISAL DEVICES AS A MEANS TO DISCLOSE IDEOLOGICAL STANCE
on
LINGUISTIKA
APPRAISAL DEVICES AS A MEANS TO DISCLOSE IDEOLOGICAL STANCE
W a r s o n o
Universitas Negeri Semarang
Abstrak
Artikel ini memaparkan hasil analisis teks berjudul “Al-Qaeda in the Asia Pacific: Origin, Capability, and Threat” untuk mengetahui bagaimana penulis teks mempergunakan piranti penilai sikap (appraisal devices) untuk menunjukkan sikapnya terhadap materi teks yang ditulisnya. Piranti penilai sikap terdiri dari sistem sikap (systems of attitude) yang dirinci lagi menjadi tiga sub-sistem yaitu: sistem afek (affect system), sistem penilaian watak (system of judgement), dan sistem penilaian barang (system of appreciation); kemudian sistem penguat perasaan (system of amplification), dan sumber sikap (source of attitude) (Martin dan Rose, 2003). Pelaksanaan analisis teks mengikuti prosedur yang disarankan oleh White (2001) dan dengan menerapkan sistem penilaian sikap (appraisal systems) yang ditawarkan oleh Martin dan Rose (2003).
Hasil analisis teks menunjukkan bahwa penulis teks mempunyai perasaan negatif yang mendalam terhadap materi teks yang ditulisnya, yaitu Al-Qaeda, dan sebagai akibatnya ia juga memberikan penilaian negatif dan apresiasi negatif yang mendalam terhadap organisasi itu. Dapat disimpulkan bahwa sikap penulis terhadap materi teks yang ditulisnya sangat negatif, yaitu penulis berpandangan bahwa Al-Qaeda adalah organisasi yang sangat tidak menyenangkan dan cenderung membahayakan.
Dalam menyuguhkan sikapnya terhadap materi teks yang ditulisnya, penulis mengutamakan penggunaan sistem afek, disusul dengan penggunaan sistem penilaian watak (judgement system), dan yang paling sedikit digunakan adalah sistem apresiasi. Dalam menunjukkan kuat atau lemahnya perasaan terhadap materi teks yang ditulisnya, penulis lebih menyukai penggunaan ‘amplifying force’ daripada pengunaan ‘sharpening/softening focus’. Dari empat pilihan yang disediakan oleh sistem amplifikasi (sistem untuk menguatkan perasaan), yaitu ‘intensifier, attitudinal lexis, metaphor, swearing’, penulis teks mengutamakan penggunaan ‘attitudinal lexis’.
Abstract
This article describes the results of analyzing a text entitled “Al-Qaeda in the Asia Pacific: Origin, Capability, and Threat” in order to find out how the text writer uses appraisal devices to present his stance towards the subject of the text he is writing. Appraisal devices include systems of attitude (comprising system of affect, system of judgment, and system of appreciation), system of amplification, and the source of attitude (Martin and Rose, 2003). Text analysis follows the procedure suggested by White (2001) by applying the Appraisal Systems offered by Martin and Rose (2003).
The results of text analyses show that the text writer has strong negative feelings about the subject of the text he is writing, which is Al-Qaeda, and as a consequence he also has strong negative judgment as well as strong negative appreciation about it. It can be concluded that the writer’s stance or attitude towards Al-Qaeda, the subject his text, is strongly negative, that is, he believes that Al-Qaeda is an evil and dangerous organization.
In presenting his stance towards the subject of the text he is writing, the writer gives preference to the use of the system of affect, followed by the use of the system of judgement, and finally the use of appreciation system. To show the strength of his feelings towards the subject of the text, the writer prefers the use of amplifying force to the use of sharpening or softening focus. Out of the four options that the amplification system provides to amplify the force (i.e. intensifier, attitudinal lexis, metaphor, and swearing), the writer gives preference to the use of attitudinal lexis.
Kata kunci: sistem apraisal, sistem afek, sistem penilaian watak, sistem apresiasi, sistem amplifikasi, sumber sikap
Systemic Functional Linguistics views language as a resource for making meanings, or as Eggins (1994 : 1) puts it “a strategic, meaning-making resource” . In the systemic functional view, all languages are organized around two main kinds of meaning, the ‘ideational’ meaning and the ‘interpersonal’ meaning. These meanings are called ‘metafunctions’ in the systemic functional theory, and are the manifestations of two general purposes which underlie all uses of language: (1) to understand the environment (ideational), and (2) to act on the others in it (interpersonal) (Halliday, 1994 : xiii). There is a third metafunction which is a resource for presenting interpersonal and ideational meanings as information organized into text in context; this is called ‘textual’ metafunction.
In the grammar of English clause, according to the systemic functional approach, there are two main clusters of systems called MOOD and TRANSITIVITY which belong to interpersonal metafunction and ideational metafunction respectively. In addition to these two, there is a third cluster called THEME which belongs to the textual metafunction (Matthiessen, 1995 : 17). Since this study is concerned with an analysis of a text to find out the writer’s stance towards the subject he is dealing with, which means it has to do with his attitude towards the content of the text, the text analysis focuses mainly on the interpersonal metafunction of language. To be more specific, the text analysis focuses on the MOOD of the clauses or chunks found in the text.
MOOD is “a resource for enacting roles and relationships between speaker and listener” (Matthiessen, 1995 : 17) or between writer and reader (in the case of a written language). Speakers and listeners use the interpersonal metafunction to work together to produce text; in other words, they co-author text; and at the same time they use the interpersonal resources to create, maintain, and revise the systems that underlie the texts. MOOD provides the speaker with alternative speech roles from which he makes choices, for example a questioner, and from which he may assign complementary role to the listener, such as an answerer.
Language plays an important role in presenting someone’s stance towards the subject he is writing. It can be used as a means of evaluation: evaluating people’s attitudes towards other people, objects, and anything found in their surroundings. This evaluation system is called ‘appraisal system’ (Martin and Rose, 2003). Using appraisal devices, a person can evaluate objects (human and non-human) and things that he is confronting. This study is interested in seeing how the writer of the text under analysis uses appraisal devices to present his stance towards the subject he is writing.
“Appraisal is concerned with evaluation – the kinds of attitudes that are negotiated in a text, the strength of the feelings involved and the ways in which values are sourced and readers aligned” (Martin and Rose, 2003 : 22). Discourse, both spoken and written, has an interactive nature, which means that it is negotiation. We negotiate things through a system of interpersonal meanings, and this is just what appraisal is all about.
Appraisal, as Martin and Rose state above, has to do with the kinds of attitudes. Attitudes have to do with evaluating things, people’s character and their feelings, and such evaluations, in their opinion, can be more or less intense, that is they may be more or less amplified. And the attitude may be the writer’s (or the speaker’s) own or it may be attributed to some other source. It can be seen that there are three aspects of appraisal: attitudes, how they are amplified, and their sources. Below are brief descriptions of each of the three aspects of appraisal referred to here.
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2.1 Attitudes
Attitudes or evaluation can be divided into three kinds, depending on what is being evaluated: we may evaluate people’s feelings, people’s character, or the value of things. The resources for expressing feelings are referred to as affect, those for judging people’s character as judgement, and those for valuing the worth of things as appreciation (Martin and Rose, 2003 : 24).
People may have good feelings or bad feelings, thus affect may be positive or negative. Feelings also may be expressed directly or they may also be expressed indirectly or implied which can be inferred from people’s behaviour. By examining the writer’s feelings, which may be positive or negative and which may be expressed directly or indirectly, it is expected that the reader will be able to know the writer’s feelings towards the subject of his text.
Judgements of people’s character can be positive or negative, and they may be judged explicitly or implicitly (Martin & Rose, 2003 : 28). Judgements can be divided into personal judgements and moral judgements, both of which can also be positive or negative. Positive personal judgements are referred to as admiration, and negative ones as criticism. Positive moral judgements are referred to as praise, and negative ones as condemnation.
Appreciation of things includes our attitudes about anything we find in our surroundings, such as TV shows, films, books, paintings, homes, public buildings, performances, plays; anything that we see or happen around us. As with affect and judgement, things can be appreciated positively or negatively.
One distinctive feature of attitudes, according to Martin and Rose (2003 : 37), is that they are gradable, which means that we can say how strongly we feel about someone or something. For example, if we say that someone is intelligent, we may place his intelligence on a certain scale and rank it highly or lowly in relation to other choices we can make:
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extremely intelligent sharply intelligent really intelligent quite intelligent fairly intelligent somewhat intelligent |
high grading low grading | ||
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From: Martin and Rose (2003 : 38)
From the above scaling, it can be seen that some choices turn the volume up (e.g. extremely, sharply) and others tone it down (e.g. fairly, somewhat).
Martin and Rose distinguish two kinds of resources for amplification. The first one is for turning the volume up or down. These resources include words that intensify meanings, such as very/really/ extremely, and vocabulary items that include degrees of intensity, such as happy/delighted/ecstatic. This kind of amplifying is referred to as force. The second kind of resources for amplification involves sharpening or softening categories of people and things, using words such as about/exactly or real/sort of/kind of. This kind of amplifying is referred to as focus.
There are words that can amplify the force of attitudes, such as very/really/extremely. These kinds of words are known as intensifiers. Intensifiers make it possible for us to compare things – to say how strongly we feel about someone or something, by comparison to others. For example, the word best may be implicitly compared with worst in a sentence such as: The white people became dissatisfied with the best they got. And best may also be compared with better in a sentence such as: The white had got the best but they still wanted better. These comparisons are possible because, according to Martin and Rose (2003 : 38), the worth of things is gradable. We have gradation such as: best/better/good/bad/ worse/worst.
Then we have intensifiers such as the following: a far more successful effort; as complete a house as possible. These intensifiers belong to scales such as the following: slightly more/a little more/a lot more/far more less than/as much as/more than.
Some comparison refers to excess of feeling, such as: too hard to bear; too frightened to say anything. Too contrasts with enough in this region of meaning, as can be seen in the following scale: not enough/enough/too much. Referring to Cobuild (1998), Martin and Rose say that many intensifiers themselves involve attitude, such as:
amazingly beautiful
unusually beautiful
dangerously beautiful
breathtakingly beautiful
Then, there are vocabulary items that include degrees of intensity, such as: happy/delighted/ecstatic. Martin and Rose call these kinds of words attitudinal lexis – i.e. lexis with attitude; whereas the intensifiers discussed earlier, like better/best, all/several/some, must/would/might, are called grammatical items. That is their meaning depends on being combined with ‘content words’. By contrast, ‘content words’ are technically referred to as lexical items, or simply lexis.
Attitudinal lexis plays an important role in narratives and other story genres. Martin and Rose admit that it is not always easy to arrange groups of words showing
degrees of intensity along a scale, but speakers of language know that there are various degrees of feeling involved. With items of attitudinal lexis, amplification is fused into the words themselves, so that the word delighted, for example, is defined as ‘greatly pleased’ in the dictionary, with the amplification being indicated using the word ‘greatly.’
Following are more examples of attitudinal lexis taken from Martin and Rose (2003 : 40):
dull/placid/lively/vivacious
saddened/grief stricken/torn to pieces
happy/chuffed/delighted/elated/ecstatic bemused/puzzled/confused/ bewildered whimper/groan/cry/screech/shriek
ask/request/pray/beseech/plead
Attitudinal lexis also includes metaphors and swearing (Martin and Rose (2003 : 41). Metaphor may effectively intensify the degree of feeling involved. For example, a writer may write: ‘He was ice cold in a sweltering night’, or ‘His eyes were dull like the dead’, or ‘I heard blood curdling shrieks’, each of which tells us how cold the man was, how dull his eyes were, and how frightening the screams the writer heard were. Swearing may also be used to express a feeling of frustration. An example is given in a story about Helena (Martin and Rose 2003) to show her frustration with South African leaders, in which Helena says: ‘I can understand if Mr (F.W.) de Klerk says he didn’t know, but dammit, there must be a clique, . . . Dammit! What else can this abnormal life be than a cruel human rights violation?’
Use of attitudinal lexis will vary from genre to genre; some genres make use of them a lot, others use them less, and still others use them very much less or even perhaps none. For example, stories use a lot of them, scientific texts use less, but legal texts use even less or perhaps none.
Focus is about resources for making something that is non-gradable become gradable. For example, a person may introduce himself as a teacher: “I work as a high school teacher.” Experientially, this sets himself up as having one kind of job rather than another (lawyer, doctor, soldier, etc.). Classifications of this type are categorical distinctions – he is a teacher as opposed to being something else.
However, a teacher may say: “I’m a real teacher”, perhaps as opposed to one who never prepares himself to teach well in class, who always comes to class without any preparation, for whom the term ‘a cheater’ may be more appropriate. This in effect turns a categorical boundary between types of professions into a graded one, allowing for various degrees of ‘teacherhood’. This implies that there are teachers who are not real teachers, who teach only half-heartedly, who are not really qualified to be teachers. In the following question and answer, the answerer is trying to tell the questioner that he is not quite a teacher:
Q : Are you a teacher?
A : Sort of.
Grading resources of this kind do not so much turn the volume up and down as sharpen and soften the boundaries between things. Real teacher sharpens the focus, a sort of teacher softens it.
In addition to things, types of qualities and even categorical concepts like numbers can also be sharpened or softened. For example, deep blue vs light blue; about three years ago vs exactly three years ago. In an expression ‘I saw it with my own eyes’, the word ‘own’ sharpens the category ‘my eyes’, that is, they are ‘my eyes and not someone else’s eyes’. In the expression ‘This is not quite my first visit to this town’, not quite is an example of softened focus.
All of the resources for amplification, both force and focus, are technically referred to as graduation. The options for amplifying attitudes are set out in Figure 1 below.
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force |
intensifiers attitudinal lexis metaphores swearing |
he still plays great the second part is fantastic… ice cold in a sweltering night dammit, there must be a clique |
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focus |
sharpen soften |
a true guitar legend a part-time blues fan |
Figure 1. Options for graduation (From Martin and Rose, 2003 : 43)
The last region of appraisal that has to be considered is the source of attitudes – who are the evaluations coming from? In narratives, the evaluation quite probably comes from the narrator. If the narrator says, “It was a beautiful relationship”, that is the narrator’s opinion. However, a text writer may give voice to other sources by quoting or reporting what other people said.
This potential for sourcing what is said, according to Martin and Rose (2003), was one of the factors that made the Russian linguist Bakhtin think about the dialogic nature of discourse, even in texts which are traditionally thought of as monologues. Martin and Rose use the term heterogloss where the source of an attitude is other than the writer, and monogloss (‘single voice’) where the source is the author. Technically sourcing resources are referred to as engagement.
Figure 2 on the next page outlines the key to appraisal systems. In this figure, the braces are used to show that we can choose from all the items enclosed within them at the same time (simultaneously). The square bracket is used to indicate that we can choose only either one.
'— monogloss
ENGAGEMENT→
*— Heterogloss
PROJECTION . . .
MODALITY . . .
CONCESSION . . .
AFFECT
APPRAISAL
ATTITUDE
JUDGEMENT
APPRECIATION
FORCE
GRADUATION
FOCUS
Figure 2. Appraisal Systems (From Martin and Rose 2003:54)
This study is qualitative and descriptive in nature. The qualitative method is used in this study to unfold the text under analysis, and the descriptive method is used to describe the realization of the interpersonal meanings found in the text using the appraisal system offered by Martin and Rose (2003).
This qualitative-descriptive method of investigation is accomplished in two stages. First, the text is closely read to get a comprehensive understanding of its content. Second, the text is broken down into clauses or chunks manageable for analysis following the model offered by White (2001), and then each of the clauses or chunks is analyzed using the appraisal system offered by Martin and Rose (2003). In this way, the text is first approached from a general point of view, that is, the text is treated as a whole, and then it is approached from a more specific one – clause by clause, and finally to the smallest units – words of appraisal devices that the text writer uses to realize interpersonal meanings.
As this study employs qualitative method of investigation, the researcher becomes the main instrument for collecting the data. Data collection in analyzing the text is done by closely reading the text. This is done in order to have a comprehensive
understanding of the content of the text which then will form the basis for further analysis.
The text being analyzed in this study is entitled “Al-Qaeda in the Asia Pacific: Origin, Capability, and Threat”, which was written by an expert in terrorism, Rohan Gunaratna. The text, which was published in the International Institute for Asian Studies’ (IIAS) Newsletter of the November 2002 issue, was based on Gunaratna’s (2002) book, “Inside Al-Qaeda: Global Network of Terror”. The data for text analysis are the clauses, phrases or words found in the text that contain attitudinal implications. In other words, they are the clauses, phrases or words that contain the appraisal devices, and the source of the data is the above mentioned text.
The interpersonal meanings are realized through phrases and words of appraisal devices used in the text to express attitudes and feelings. The unit of analysis in this study is appraisal device.
Several steps have to be taken in analyzing the text. Following is the description of the procedure of text analysis:
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a. Closely reading the text to have comprehensive understanding of its content. This comprehensive understanding of the text content forms the basis for further analysis.
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b. Rewriting the text by numbering the lines for ease of reference. The original text was published in the IIAS newsletter, and the whole text was spread over different pages: part of it was printed on the front page and the rest was printed on pp. 4 and 5. For ease of reference, therefore, it needs rewriting and line-numbering.
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c. Breaking down the text into chunks or clauses for further analysis. This is the process of identifying clause boundaries in the text and breaking the text down into individual clauses. When two or more clauses are joined together in a clause complex, they are then broken down into individual clauses for the purposes of analysis.
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d. Analyzing each of the clauses based on the appraisal system network. In this stage, the appraisal system as described in 2.1 through 2.3 above is carefully applied to exhaustively analyze the clauses.
Text analysis covers the analysis of the text based on the systems of attitude, one based on the systems of amplification, and one based on the systems of source.
The text consisted of 207 chunks or clauses each of which was then analyzed based on the system of attitude including its sub-systems, then based on the system of amplification, and finally based on the system of source.
Text analysis based on the systems of attitude was divided into three subanalyses: one based on the system of affect, one based on the system of judgement, and one based on the system of appreciation.
The result of text analysis based on the system of affect shows that out of 207 chunks/clauses, 114 of them contain affect values and 93 of them contain no affect values. Out of 114 chunks/clauses containing affect values, 101 of them (89%) contain negative affect values, and only 13 of them (11%) contain positive values. Comparing the number of chunks/clauses containing negative affect values with those containing positive affect values, we can conclude that the text must have been written under the influence of negative feelings towards the subject matter of the text.
The result of text analysis based on the system of judgement shows that out of 207 chunks/clauses that the text comprises, only 46 of them contain the judgement values. Out of the 46 chunks/clauses containing judgement values, 44 (96%) bear negative judgement, and only 2 of them (4%) have positive judgement.
The result of text analysis based on the system of appreciation shows that the textunder analysis contains 36 chunks/clauses bearing the appreciation values. Of these 36 chunks, 30 chunks (83%) have negative appreciation, and only 6 chunks (17%) are positively appreciated.
Attitudes are gradable, which means that we can say how strongly we feel about someone or something. A person or thing may be highly graded or lowly graded or just in between. Thus, we may turn the volume up (e.g. extremely, sharply) or tone it down (e.g. fairly, somewhat). This is the kind of amplification referred to as force. Another resource for amplification is not turning the volume up or down, but sharpening or softening categories of people and things, a system of amplification which is referred to as focus.
Text analysis based on the system of amplification shows that there are 53 chunks/clauses in which the writer employs the system of amplification. Out of these 53 chunks/clauses with amplification, 46 are amplified by means of amplifying force and 7 of them are amplified by means of sharpening/softening focus. Of the 53 chunks/ clauses containing amplification values, 41 are rated with high grading, 11 with medium grading, and 1 with low grading. To amplify the force, in most cases (32 out of 43) the writer uses attitudinal lexis, then intensifier which is used only in 11 cases, and metaphor in 3 cases. It can be seen that the writer mostly uses high grading in amplifying the force, and out of the four possible options that the appraisal systems provide to amplify force (intensifiers, attitudinal lexis, metaphor, and swearing) he prefers to use attitudinal lexis.
The text under analysis is a narrative, and in a narrative the narrator or author can be said to be fully responsible for all of the evaluation, since all of it is filtered through his/her narration (Martin and Rose, 2003 : 44). As the result of text analysis based on the system of affect shows, out of 114 chunks/clauses containing the affect values, the sources of attitudes in 110 of them are attributable to the author or writer.
The writer of the text under analysis, i.e. “Al-Qaeda in the Asia Pacific: Origin, Capability, and Threat”, does give voice to other players by quoting what others say. Thus, although most of the sources of attitudes are attributable to the writer himself, which means a single voice (= monogloss), in some cases the sources are other than the writer (different voices = heterogloss). Since most of the sources of attitudes are attributable to the writer, whereas other voices are used only rarely, it can be concluded that the author or writer is responsible for most of the evaluation towards the subject under discussion.
The results of text analyses show the following things:
First, the results of text analyses based on the systems of attitude comprising text analysis based the system of affect, one based on the system of judgement, and one based the system of appreciation show that the writer mostly uses the system of affect in presenting his attitude towards the subject he is writing. Through the use of the affect system, the writer shows that he has negative feelings about the subject he is writing, which is Al-Qaeda, and as a consequence he also has negative ethical judgement as well as negative appreciation about it.
Second, the result of text analysis based on the system amplification shows that the writer mostly uses amplifying force instead of sharpening or softening focus in showing the strength of his feelings towards the subject he is writing. In most cases the writer uses high grading in amplifying the force of his feelings, and in doing so he gives preference to the use of attitudinal lexis.
Third, the result of text analysis based on the source of attitude shows that the writer is the main source of attitude; in other words, the writer is responsible for most of the evaluation towards the subject he is writing, i.e. Al-Qaeda.
To sum up, it can be said that the writer’s stance or attitude towards the subject he is writing, i.e. Al-Qaeda, is strongly negative, implying his ideological belief that Al-Qaeda is an evil or even dangerous organization. This can be seen from the strong negative feelings, strong negative judgement, and strong negative appreciation about the organization, as indicated by the result of text analysis based on the system of amplification. In presenting his stance towards the subject he is writing, the writer mostly uses the system of affect, and in amplifying the force of his feelings he prefers to use attitudinal lexis.
REFERENCES
Eggins, Suzanne. 1994. An Introduction to Systemic Functional Linguistics. London: Pinter Publishers.
Gunaratna, Rohan. 2002. Inside Al-Qaeda: Global Network of Terror. New York: The Berkley Publishing Group.
_______. 2002. Al-Qaeda in the Asia Pacific: Origin, Capability, and Threat. IIAS Newsletter # 29 November 2002. pp. 1, 4-5
Halliday, M.A.K. 1994. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. Second Edition. London: Edward Arnold.
Martin, J.R. and David Rose. 2003. Working with Discourse: Meaning Beyond the Clause. London, New York: Continuum.
Matthiessen, Christian. 1995. Lexicogrammatical Cartography: English Systems. Tokyo: International Language Sciences Publications.
White, P.R. 2001. Appraisal : An Overview. Available at: http://www.grammatics.com/ Appraisal Guide. (Downloaded on December 2, 2005).
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