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Abstract: The thesis explores the connection between literature and law through an appraisal-based linguistic analysis of thirteen selected excerpts from William Shakespeare's Othello and its Slovene translations by Oton Župančič (1923) and Milan Jesih (2013). Excerpts exemplify courtroom rhetoric as characters employ legal roles, such as judge, witness, and solicitor, thus engaging in discourse that mirrors judicial proceedings. The focus of the analysis is therefore on the legal discourse and how this discourse is either maintained or omitted in the Slovene translations. Using Martin and White's appraisal framework, developed in 2005 within systemic functional linguistics, this study examines how attitude, graduation, and engagement contribute to the usage of legal discourse. The comparative analysis of the original and the translations also reveals key differences in how evaluative meaning is preserved or transformed, highlighting the similarities and discrepancies. The research demonstrates that in Othello, legal discourse helps reveal character's intentions, while appraisal analysis reveals moral evaluations of the character's behavior, their emotions, and the aesthetic evaluation of circumstances, as well as how these evaluations are graded and how characters use their voice to either confirm the accusations or deny them.
Keywords: William Shakespeare, Othello, appraisal, legal discourse, contrastive stylistics
Published in DKUM: 03.10.2025; Views: 0; Downloads: 35
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Abstract: This master’s thesis examines five selected TED Talks by using Martin and White’s Appraisal Theory (2005). TED Talks are a specific form of speech which has spread worldwide with live TED events and even videos online since the first organised TED event in 1984. The theoretical background of this master’s thesis covers mainly Martin and White’s Appraisal Theory (2005), although it does include the views of other researchers, including Mary Macken-Horarik and Anne Isaac, as well as Geoff Thompson, on appraisal analysis as well. Furthermore, it encompasses a short overview of discourse analysis and systemic functional linguistics, as this is the theoretical framework from which Appraisal Theory has evolved. The empirical part includes the analysis of appraisal in the five selected TED Talks, chosen based on the assigned tag on the official TED web page. The selected TED Talks are: “Why I'm Done Trying to Be ‘Man Enough’” by Justin Baldoni; “Dare to Refuse the Origin Myths That Claim Who You Are” by Chetan Bhatt; “How Changing Your Story Can Change Your Life” by Lori Gottlieb; “My Year of Saying Yes to Everything” by Shonda Rhimes; and “Your Brain Hallucinates Your Conscious Reality” by Anil Seth. The appraisal model explores the speaker/writer’s evaluation of certain occurrences, concepts and people in a form of his/her emotional responses, judgement and appreciation. Furthermore, it studies the speaker/writer’s positioning to alternative viewpoints and alignment with the text’s point of view. The aim of this thesis is to observe the use of appraisals in a contemporary form of a public speech, i.e. TED Talks. The further objective of this thesis is also to detect typical patterns in appraisal use within the genre of public speaking, specifically, within TED Talks which are known to have a set form and common features that distinguish them from other forms of speeches or academic lectures. Thus, this thesis aims to research ways in which the speakers of the selected TED Talks express themselves with the use of appraisals. Since all but one of the chosen five TED Talks are tagged as ‘Personal Growth’ on the official TED web page, the purpose of the research is also to see whether there are any differences in appraisal use, more specifically in the use of affect between the TED Talks tagged as ‘Personal Growth’ and the one which is not tagged as such and may therefore be more objective in its nature. Besides exploring attitudinal resources, the thesis also observes the occurrence of graduation resources and their prevalence, as well as the ways the speakers engage with their audience and their prevalence. The appraisal analysis of the selected TED Talks has proved the use of all attitudinal resources in the delivery of these talks. Furthermore, the analysis has shown that the chosen topics of TED Talks have an influence on the speakers’ use of attitudes. Affect has a prominent role in most talks, however, the more the speaker tries to stay unbiased and objective, the more she or he avoids affect in relation to her-/himself and turns to appreciation. In addition, the speakers of the selected TED Talks tend to use graduation heavily in their narrative, force being the predominant graduation resource in all selected talks. Even though the analysis of engagement resources in the selected TED Talks showed the presence of dialogically expansive expressions to be more common in four out of five examined TED Talks, dialogically contractive expressions also occur frequently in the speakers’ narratives, revealing the speakers’ attempt to balance welcoming of alternative viewpoints and at the same time maintain self-assurance in their knowledge and beliefs by restricting other voices.
Keywords: Appraisal, TED Talks, Evaluation, Appraisal Analysis, Discourse Analysis
Published in DKUM: 20.12.2021; Views: 1352; Downloads: 183
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Abstract: Media articles, regardless of the media in which they are published (e.g. news, a report, a notification), are generally expected to be characterized by balance and objectivity as one of their most important and identifiable characteristics. However, the results of the analysis show that this is not entirely true for the articles about ice hockey analysed in this thesis. Thus, the presence of a certain degree of subjectivity has been determined. In the thesis, the article was considered objective when the writer wrote about the facts and data that could be checked and did not reveal his/her emotions, presence or opinion. At the same time, the article was considered subjective when the writer was present in the article in a way that s/he revealed his/her emotions or s/he evaluated what was going on and/or the hockey players. For the analysis, the appraisal model developed in 2005 by Martin and White was used because it turned out to be the most useful as their appraisal categories (graduation, engagement, and attitude) cover all lexical choices, with which one shows his/her attitude or engagement or graduates something. Appraisal can be a single word or a phrase that indirectly/implicitly or directly/explicitly expresses one’s opinion, judgement, or engagement. According to the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDOCE), appraisal is “a statement or opinion judging the worth, value, or condition of something” (https://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/appraisal), while the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (OALD, 8th Edition) defines it as “a judgement of the value, performance or nature of sb/sth” (OALD 2010: 62). The analysis of the articles was carried out with Computer Assisted Text Markup and Analysis (CATMA) platform. Objectives of the thesis were to research the differences in the use of appraisals in the articles that describe the same event, i.e. the ice hockey match. Thus, it was researched how the author’s presence and engagement were reflected through appraisal, and how much of subjectivity was present in the articles that were supposed to be objective. Next, I was interested in how the writer is positioned in the articles which report about the winning team, and how in the articles reporting about the losing team. Finally, it was researched which types of appraisal were used in three articles which report about the same match and were published on the official web sites of Los Angeles Kings and Colorado Avalanche, and in the article that was published in a neutral web media FOX Sports. The results showed that the articles that were published on the official web sites of the teams tended to be more subjective as numerous instances of the writer’s presence and engagement were found. On the other hand, the article from the neutral web site turned out to be the most objective and unbiased, even though some instances of the writer’s presence and engagement were found as well.
Keywords: appraisal system, appraisals, ice hockey, graduation, engagement, attitude.
Published in DKUM: 06.06.2019; Views: 1676; Downloads: 116
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Abstract: The language of automotive advertising has to be effective, special, innovative and creative. Advertisers use convincing language to awake the desire to buy the advertised product. In advertisements both language with the emotive power and visual components make an impact on the consumer. Theoretical foundation of this work consists of two literary sources. The first one is a work written by Guy Cook: The Discourse of Advertising, which provides some insight in advertising as discourse. The second work is Martin and White’s Language of Evaluation, Appraisal in English which contributed to the theoretical explanation of evaluative language. The empirical part investigates advertising as discourse, different elements of context and the language of advertisements through appraisal framework.
Keywords: advertising, discourse of advertising, language of evaluation, appraisal
Published in DKUM: 25.10.2016; Views: 1849; Downloads: 135
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