THE USE OF ATTITUDES AS A PART OF APPRAISALS SYSTEM IN THE AL JAZEERA NEWS: IRAQ WAR

Appraisal is a system of interpersonal meanings. Interpersonal meaning is meaning that makes it possible for people to negotiate their attitudes and feelings in social relationship with others. Every social relationship is a social event that results in a text that may be spoken or written. From this point of view, news is a kind of text through which the journalists negotiate their attitudes and feelings with the readers. This thesis tried to provide answers to two research problems: (1) what kinds of attitude are used in the articles? , (2) how are the attitudes used to express feelings in the articles? Therefore, the research method used in this study is qualitative descriptive in nature. The purpose of the study is to describe and analyze the appraisal devices used in the articles which were taken from Al-Jazeera news channel by following the system network of appraisal offered by Martin and Rose (2003). The articles are, therefore, the data under analysis in this thesis. Since appraisals in written texts concern with the choice of words as devices to realize people’s attitudes and feelings, the unit of analysis in this study is appraisal device. Based on the above questions, the analysis was done by following the techniques offered by Martin and Rose (2003) and White (2001). The articles was first broken down into chunks. Then, each of the chunks was analysed for appraisal devices. The result of the analysis is then used to describe the appraisal devices employed in the articles, and how these devices are used to express attitudes and feelings in the articles. On the basis of the result of the analysis done to the articles, the following conclusions can be drawn. Firstly, the journalists employs all the three resources of attitudes to express people’s feelings (affect), judge people’s characters (judgment), and value the worth of things (appreciation). Affect and appreciation dominate the use of appraisal devices and judgment is the least resource used. Secondly, the affects used in these studied articles are non-authorial. Non-authorial affect value is higher than authorial affect. Non-authorial affect is used since the articles are factual stories that factual news should not be mixed with the author’s attitudes. Most of affects are expressed negatively. It is reasonable since the articles are about the war. The number of instances with judgement is limited since the articles do not emphasize the evaluation of people’s characters. Finally, throughout the articles the journalists are highly evaluative in expressing their attitudes. They employ various resources of amplification to dynamically mobilize attitudes, and turn the volume of the evaluation up and down throughout the articles. The result of this study is expected to give a valuable contribution to the teaching of English, especially in the teaching of writing. The understanding of appraisal system is expected to raise linguistic awareness of both teachers and students of English. Such awareness is important in the text-making processes (writing and speaking). This awareness will become a potential for them to lead to the production of good texts in which words are appropriately selected to realize their attitudes and feelings, and in which various linguistic resources related to appraisal devices are employed in harmony.