Attitudinal resources in English and Vietnamese movie reviews of Pixar’s movies: an appraisal study

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

QUY NHON UNIVERSITY

TRẦN XUÂN BẢO TRÂN

ATTITUDINAL RESOURCES IN ENGLISH AND

VIETNAMESE MOVIE REVIEWS OF PIXAR’S

MOVIES: AN APPRAISAL STUDY

Field: English Linguistics

Code: 8 22 02 01

Supervisor: VÕ DUY ĐỨC, Ph.D.

BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO

TRƢỜNG ĐẠI HỌC QUY NHƠN

TRẦN XUÂN BẢO TRÂN

PHÂN TÍCH NGUỒN NGỮ LIỆU THÁI ĐỘ

TRONG CÁC BÀI ĐÁNH GIÁ PHIM PIXAR

TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT

Chuyên ngành: Ngôn Ngữ Anh

Code: 8 22 02 01

Ngƣời hƣớng dẫn: TS. VÕ DUY ĐỨC

i

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

I declare that this thesis titled “Attitudinal resources in English and

Vietnamese movie reviews of Pixar‟s movies: An Appraisal study” is

absolutely my original work. This thesis contains no material published

elsewhere or extracted in whole, or in part of a thesis by which I have

qualified for or been awarded another degree or diploma except where

reference is made in the text of the thesis.

To the best of my knowledge and belief, I have not used any sources

other than those listed in the bibliography and identified as references.

This thesis does not incorporate with any material previously submitted

for a degree or diploma in any university without acknowledgment.

Quy Nhon, August 2021

Trần Xuân Bảo Trân

ii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I gratefully acknowledge my deep appreciation to all of my teachers

who have provided me with useful and interesting lectures, their precious

works, materials and knowledge as well as invaluable consultation, which

have helped me to lay the foundation for this thesis.

In particular, I would like to express my sincere thanks to Dr. Vo Duy

Duc, my supervisor and my teacher. Without his enthusiastic guidance,

helpful advice, and enormous encouragement, this thesis would have been far

from being accomplished.

I also give special thanks to all of my classmates, M.A students of

English course 22nd at the Quy Nhon University who gave me their help

during the time I studied and conducted my thesis.

Finally, with my heart, I can say that I owe my debt to my parents, who

gave their unconditioned love and never-ended encouragement which is

extremely significant for me to overcome a lot of troubles during the course

and the study of this thesis.

iii

ABSTRACT

This study employed Appraisal Theory in a contrastive analysis of

Attitudinal resources in English and Vietnamese movie reviews of Pixar‟s

movies. The data consists of 40 reviews of 9 movies (Inside Out, The Good

Dinosaur, Finding Dory, Cars 3, Coco, Incredibles 2, Toy Story 4, Onward,

Soul) which were produced from 2015 to 2020, collected randomly from

reliable online resources. The overall purpose was to find out the similarities

and differences between the two languages in terms of Attitudinal resources

namely Affect, Judgement and Appreciation. The study was carried out

through the adoption of quantitative, qualitative approaches and the use of

analytic, synthetic and descriptive methods. The results indicate that the three

categories of Attitudinal resources all appear in both English and Vietnamese

movie reviews. It was found that both languages tend to use more

Appreciation than the other two Attitudinal resources. Similarly, the writers in

the two languages tend to concern more on expressing the characters‟ feelings

in the movies as well as the audiences‟ emotions. Also, the English and

Vietnamese reviewers incline to evaluate human behavior explicitly via

lexical items containing judgement. Besides, the tendency towards the use of

positive assessment dominates negative assessment in EMRs and VMRs. In

spite of these similarities between the two languages, a number of differences

were observed. Hopefully, the results of the study will offer the readers

knowledge of evaluative language related to teaching and learning English.

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP ...................................................................i

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................ii

ABSTRACT.....................................................................................................iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS.................................................................................iv

ABBREVIATIONS .........................................................................................vi

LIST OF TABLES..........................................................................................vii

LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................viii

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ..................................................................... 1

1.1. Rationale ................................................................................................. 1

1.2. Aims and Objectives............................................................................... 2

1.2.1. Aims.................................................................................................. 2

1.2.2. Objectives ......................................................................................... 3

1.3. Research questions.................................................................................. 3

1.4. Scope of the study................................................................................... 3

1.5. Significance of the study......................................................................... 4

1.6. Organization of the study........................................................................ 4

CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW.......................................................... 6

2.1. Appraisal Theory .................................................................................... 6

2.1.1. Attitude ............................................................................................. 7

2.1.2. Engagement .................................................................................... 17

2.1.3. Graduation ...................................................................................... 19

2.2. Related studies......................................................................................20

2.3. Movie reviews.......................................................................................24

2.4. Summary ...............................................................................................25

CHAPTER 3. METHODOLOGY AND PROCEDURE................................26

3.1. Research design ....................................................................................26

v

3.2. Data collection ......................................................................................27

3.3. Data analysis.........................................................................................28

3.4. Reliability and validity..........................................................................30

3.5. Procedures.............................................................................................30

3.6. Summary ...............................................................................................31

CHAPTER 4. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS..........................................32

4.1. Overview of Attitude sub-types in EMRs and VMRs..........................32

4.2. Attitudinal resources used in EMRs and VMRs...................................36

4.2.1. Affect .............................................................................................. 36

4.2.2. Judgement ....................................................................................... 52

4.2.3. Appreciation.................................................................................... 66

4.3. Summary ...............................................................................................78

CHAPTER 5. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS ..............................79

5.1. Conclusions...........................................................................................79

5.2. Implications...........................................................................................83

5.3. Limitations............................................................................................84

5.4. Suggestions for further research ...........................................................85

REFERENCE..................................................................................................86

vi

ABBREVIATIONS

Aff : Affect

App : Appreciation

Auth : Authorial

Cap : Judgement: Capacity

Comp : Appreciation: Composition

Judg : Judgement

EMRs : English movie reviews

Exp : Explicit

Hap : Affect: Un/Happiness

Imp : Implicit

Inc : Affect: Dis/Inclination

Non- Auth : Non- Authorial

Norm : Judgement: Normality

Prop : Judgement: Propriety

Reac : Appreciation: Reaction

Sat : Affect: Satisfaction

Sec : Affect: In/Security

Ten : Judgement: Tenacity

Val : Valuation

Ver : Judgement: Veracity

VMRs : Vietnamese movie reviews

(-) : Negative

(+) : Positive

vii

LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1. Judgement-Social Esteem..............................................................12

Table 2.2. Judgement-Social Sanction............................................................13

Table 2.3. Types of Appreciation ...................................................................16

Table 4.1 Frequency of Attitudinal resources in EMRs and VMRs...............33

Table 4.2 The distribution of Affectual resources in EMRs and VMRs........37

Table 4.3 Positive and Negative Affect in EMRs and VMRs........................45

Table 4.4 Authorial and Non-Authorial Affect in EMRs and VMRs ............48

Table 4.5 Types of Judgement in EMRs and VMRs......................................52

Table 4.6 The detailed distribution of Social Esteem and Social Sanction in

EMRs and VMRs..........................................................................54

Table 4.7 Positive and Negative Judgement in EMRs and VMRs.................60

Table 4.8 Explicit and Implicit Judgement in EMRs and VMRs...................63

Table 4.9 The distribution of Reaction, Composition and Valuation in EMRs

and VMRs.....................................................................................67

Table 4.10 Positive and Negative Appreciation in EMRs and VMRs ...........72

Table 4.11 Explicit and Implicit Appreciation in EMRs and VMRs .............75